Jailed drug dealer gets more time for scheme at prison

Robert Korbe, whose drugdealing operation led to the killing of an FBI agent 12 years ago, will spend another four years behind bars for dealing drugs inside the prison where he has been held.

U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan on Monday imposed a term of 48 months on Korbe, 51, to be served after his current 300month term ends. He’ll also have to forfeit $2,819 from his prison account, which contained some of the proceeds of his crime while behind bars at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto.

Korbe’s prior case led to the killing of FBI agent Sam Hicks during a raid on Korbe’s Indiana Township house in 2008. He also has a half-dozen other drug convictions in state and federal court and an assault conviction.

In the current case, Korbe was directly involved in a scheme to smuggle drug-saturated greeting cards into FCI Loretto. He faced 48 months in prison, but the defense and prosecution sparred over whether it should be served at the same time as his current sentence or after. The judge sided with the prosecution.

Korbe was among several high-profile federal inmates indicted in Pittsburgh in 2019 following an investigation that revealed a network of defendants sneaking synthetic cannabinoids into the prison system on greeting cards, letters and pictures for inmates to smoke.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Haller said Korbe participated in the drug smuggling with Noah Landfried, of Moon, another defendant who was on federal probation in 2017 and 2018 during the conspiracy. His case is pending.

Mr. Haller said James Perry, of Ambridge, another defendant who had been on probation, helped Landfried distribute drug paper and other drugs. Perry has pleaded guilty.

Wiretaps over a cellphone used by Perry, along with an investigation by the Bureau of Prisons, established that Korbe was conspiring with Perry to distribute Landfried’s drug-saturated paper at FCI Loretto.

Among the government’s evidence were letters from Korbe to Perry in which he discussed the drug distribution.

According to testimony and court records, the ring was active in several U.S. prisons, where inmates cut the paper into pieces for distribution.

The inmates paid for the drug paper with money from their prison accounts. The investigation showed money was being transferred from those accounts to the accounts of inmate dealers and then to others on the outside.