Convicted drug dealer also did real estate deals

ATLANTA (AP) – When the suspected head of a major Atlanta-area drug-trafficking organization had money to spare, the 42-year-old often did what other amateur investors, venture capitalists and businessmen do: He snapped up blighted real estate in the city’s struggling neighborhoods.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports Elgin DeMarco Jordan’s criminal prosecution for drug dealing has helped lift the veil on how a single owner can impact a community.

Jordan and his associates bought up much of a pocket of the struggling Grove Park neighborhood, where he spent most of his life, plus a half-dozen other properties scattered across the city’s poorer areas.

The real estate was seized as part of a multi-agency effort to halt drug sales in “The Bluff,” known as a hub of the Southeast’s heroin trade. Jordan forfeited most of them when he was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for drug and money laundering charges.

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Information from: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, http://www.ajc.com