Nearly $6 million of cocaine bound for Philly intercepted as part of citywide bust, DA Krasner says

Law enforcement officials seized nearly $6 million worth of crack-cocaine destined for Philadelphia as well as thousands of fentanyl pills in a monthslong drug operation, authorities said Monday.

The seizure was the culmination of an 18-month joint investigation into several men who supplied or sold the potent synthetic opioid and other deadly drugs in the city’s Kensington neighborhood and elsewhere, according to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who said the cocaine seizure happened last week.

In all, Krasner said, law enforcement recovered 58 kilograms of cocaine with a street value of $5.8 million and fentanyl pills worth around $200,000.

The bust is the latest eye-grabbing effort to stem the flow of fentanyl and other deadly drugs into the city, and specifically to Kensington, considered one of the nation’s largest open-air drug markets.

The FBI targeted a sprawling criminal syndicate in the neighborhood last year when it arrested 33 members of the Weymouth Street gang, which was accused of running a 24/7 market for fentanyl and other drugs on the narrow block for nearly a decade.

And in May that year, the Office of the Attorney General announced a joint operation that had seized more than $6 million in fentanyl cut with the veterinary sedative xylazine, effectively disbanding a North Philadelphia trafficking organization in the process.

In the latest raid, investigators were tipped off to the criminal activity in December 2025 when members of the Delaware River Port Authority Police pulled over 46-year-old Raabitah Reynolds as he drove back to Philadelphia from New York City.

After obtaining a search warrant for Reynolds’ vehicle, officers recovered a 9mm handgun and equipment for packaging drugs.

Later, when they searched a South Philadelphia stash house tied to Reynolds, they recovered 2 kilograms of fentanyl that was ready to be packaged, a gallon jar of PCP, various pills, and more firearms, according to Assistant District Attorney Stephen Girman.

Reynolds was charged with two counts of felony possession with the intent to deliver, two counts of criminal conspiracy, and related crimes. He is being held at the Curran Fromhold Correctional Facility with bail set at $500,000.

The haul was “a significant drug seizure in and of itself,” Girman said, but investigators did not stop there.

Reynolds’ arrest led them to one of his buyers, Khalil Dandy, a drug dealer who is accused of effectively controlling sales on a block at Kensington Avenue and E Street, according to Girman.

Dandy, 36, ran that operation from his home at a Center City condominium located near 12th and Chestnut Streets, Girman said.

Officers began visiting the Kensington block to conduct undercover buys, according to Girman, learning that Dandy was supplying fentanyl and crystal meth to street dealers in the neighborhood.

Dandy was arrested on March 18 and charged with possession with the intent to manufacture or deliver and related crimes. He was released from custody on bail as he awaits a preliminary hearing.

Meanwhile, investigators offered information about Reynolds to the DEA field office in New York, which led to the raid of a “pill mill” operating out of a Brooklyn apartment.

There agents recovered more than 20 kilograms of fentanyl that had been pressed into blue pills to pass off the deadly drug as oxycodone, Girman said.

These pills “are exceptionally dangerous, because people can take them thinking they are a regular prescription painkiller, and they can be filled with a fatal amount of fentanyl,” he said.

And as investigators traced Reynolds’ network, they learned he was also involved in bulk cocaine sales that came from a supplier on the West Coast.

Those shipments were shipped to Philadelphia in crates to be sold throughout the region, according to Girman.

In early July, investigators intercepted two of those containers, and with the assistance of a K9 unit, recovered a total of 58 kilograms of cocaine from within.

They arrested another Philadelphia man, 51-year-old Ephraim Ramsey, who had showed up to pick up the drugs.

Ramsey was charged with one count of felony possession with the intent to deliver and one count of criminal conspiracy.

And when Philadelphia police went to arrest Reynolds at an apartment in the city’s Kingsessing neighborhood, he led them on a chase through a second-story window and into a back alley before being apprehended.

From a separate apartment on City Avenue, investigators recovered more than 2,000 of the blue fentanyl-laced pills as well as counterfeit Adderall, according to Girman.

In a third residence in Olney — a house being prepped to stash the cocaine shipments — officers recovered an AR-15 rifle with an obliterated serial number.

Krasner, touting the success of the operation, said he was pleased that law enforcement officers had targeted large shipments of contraband as opposed to targeting “young people with a small amount of drugs in their pocket.”

“This, in my opinion, is a much more important and much more effective approach,” he said.