Man Puts The ‘Dealer’ In ‘Car Dealer,’ Gets 40 Years For Selling Weed

Weed may be generally legal in the state of Virginia, but apparently, you can still go to prison for selling it. And not just for a little while, either. One Virginia man was just sentenced to 40 years in prison after he was caught selling weed out of a luxury used car dealership in the city of Newport News, the Virginian-Pilot reports. Can’t have anyone selling a product that’s legal to possess, right?

Okay, so that’s not entirely fair to the state of Virginia. Weed is still illegal at the federal level, and Cortez Dayshawn Bumphus managed to catch the feds’ attention as the alleged ringleader of a weed operation that imported product from California and other legal states to sell in Virginia. According to federal prosecutors, Lux Auto Sales & Rental really did sell cars, but Bumphus also used it as a front for his “large-scale drug trafficking activity.” 

As in, he and his associates were bringing in something like “1,000 pounds of marijuana a week” and spent roughly $500,000 on airfare. It isn’t entirely clear how much money they made off the entire enterprise, but prosecutors were able to track at least $22 million across more than 400 bank accounts. They also seized $400,000 that they claim are proceeds from Bumphus’s weed operation, as well as about 1,000 pounds of marijuana. The FBI also claimed the cars on the lot were used to store the weed and were protected by armed guards.

How many pounds disappeared between the time it was seized and the time the evidence was logged, as well as how much remains in the evidence locker…wait, I’m being told we aren’t supposed to raise questions like that. 

Bumphus’s arrest and eventual conviction were the result of an investigation that began in June 2021, after some snitch tipped them off. That investigation led the feds to indict Bumphus, along with 37 other defendants, in September 2023. While the majority of Bumphus’s alleged accomplices reached plea agreements with the prosecutors, Bumphus elected to go to trial, where he was later convicted on charges of “continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to distribute marijuana, conspiracy to launder money, having a gun as a convicted felon, having a gun in a drug crime, maintaining ‘a drug-involved premises’ and using a communication device in drug dealing.”

Bumphus will now spend the next four decades in prison and has been ordered to pay a $6.4 million fine and hand over $62,000 in cash, designer shoes and guns. This also wasn’t his first run-in with the law. 13NewsNow reports that back in 2016, Bumphus was arrested and charged with the murder of a man named Kevin Anthony Jackson. Prosecutors later dropped the charges, but then, in 2020, the Daily Press reports he was arrested again, this time for the murder of a man named Joel Anthony Davis Jr. In 2022, however, the jury found him not guilty. 

Considering he had already escaped two murder convictions, it makes a little more sense why Bumphus decided to risk a third trial instead of going for a plea deal. This time, though, his luck ran out. Not over accusations that he committed a violent crime but because he got a little too good at selling weed in a state where you can possess it but not legally buy it. But hey, if you or someone you know bought a used car from Lux Auto Sales & Rental, and you thought it smelled a little funny, now you know why.