The Feds Say a Dallas Clothing Store Was Actually a Front for Jet-setting Drug Dealer
There was just something that didn't add up about Debonaire Bros, the retail menswear business Kristian Fitz had registered with the Texas Secretary of State. For one, there didn't seem to be any clothes. Federal agents staked out the store's supposed address, a Red Bird home belonging to Fitz's parents, for several days, failing to spot anything resembling a clothing purchase.
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Even if Fitz was selling clothing, that didn't explain why the large stacks of small bills he brought to exchange for $100s at his local Compass Bank reeked so strongly of marijuana that the bank closed his accounts for fear that other customers might start to wonder about the lingering weed smell. It also didn't explain how Fitz, who reported an income of $37,500 to the Texas Workforce Commission, was able to spend five times that much over three years traveling back and forth to L.A. or deposit $372,000 in cash into various bank accounts, or drop six figures on a Bentley.
The Feds came to the obvious conclusion: that Fitz was dealing lots and lots of marijuana. They detail his alleged activities in a forfeiture request filed yesterday in federal court, which seeks to give the U.S. government possession of the Bentley $50,000 worth of jewelry, a Mercedes, a Lexus and $118,000 cash.
According to the filing, Fitz spent his time in L.A. buying large quantities of codeine syrup and kush, which the court filing describes as "a high-quality strain of marijuana originating in the Hindu-Kush mountain range of Afghanistan and Pakistan." These he would ship back to Dallas via UPS or FedEx. He sold the weed from a pair of drug houses on Ramsey Avenue in East Oak Cliff. An informant working with the DEA paid $5,200 per pound.
The investigation of Fitz came to a head on November 28, when federal agents raided his home in Murphy, one of the East Oak Cliff drug houses and the apartment he kept in L.A. There, in addition to the cars, cash, and jewelry, they found drug ledgers, FedEx receipts, documents suggesting that Fitz was laundering money, and, of course, large quantities of marijuana and codeine syrup.
Fitz has not yet been charged with any federal crimes. He does have a lengthy rap sheet in Dallas County with convictions on a dozen or so drug possession charges. He was indicted most recently on November 29, the day after the raids, for possession of more than five pounds of marijuana.
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