MARTINEZ — The founder of an Irish-American street gang who helped build a methamphetamine trafficking empire in the early 2000s was sentenced Friday to 100 years to life.
Coby Phillips, 43, appeared to shrug off the sentence, which — barring a successful appeal — virtually guarantees he will die in prison. He was convicted last year of murdering Darryl Grockett, an Aryan Brotherhood drug dealer found shot to death alongside a lonely road in Crockett in 2004.
“It has been far and away the most sprawling case I’ve ever been involved with, and it took a lot of determination on a lot of people for staying with it,” prosecutor Tom Kensok said, crediting the Contra Costa Sheriff for heading the investigation.
When asked if he wanted to address the court Friday, Phillips shrugged and said, “Ya win some, ya lose some.”
“Well, I guess in one sense, Mr. Grockett was the ultimate loser here,” Judge Charles “Ben” Burch replied. “You’re still alive to tell the tale, Mr. Phillips.”
The sentencing marks the end of a lengthy, tumultuous case that involved Mexican drug cartels, the Sureño gang, a Richmond policeman accused of taking bribes and aiding drug dealers, and an Irish-American street gang called the Family Affiliated Irish Mafia (FAIM), which Phillips and three others founded in the 1990s.
In the early 2000s, Phillips helped build a large-scale methamphetamine trafficking ring, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in profit. The money was spent on suburban houses, Cadillac Escalades and exotic pets, including a pair of alligators Phillips illegally shipped from Florida.
Authorities believe Phillips killed Grockett because Grockett was planning to rob two of Phillips’ associates, brothers Jose Vega-Robles and Sergio Vega-Robles, who were supplying Phillips with drugs from Mexico. The night of the killing, Phillips, Vega-Robles and a third man who is still at large — Josue Lomelli — ate dinner together at the Dead Fish restaurant in Crockett, then left for a meet-up with Grockett.
Grockett was found dead later that night. He had been shot once in the mouth, and fallen to the ground. Then someone stood over him and filled his chest with bullets.
Phillips was first tried for Grockett’s murder in 2013, and the jury hung toward not guilty. The case against him was muddied by the fact that an ex-Richmond police drug investigator, Sgt. Michael Wang, aided the Vega-Robles brothers in their drug enterprise, providing kickbacks, giving them information about witnesses, and even assuring them that if they sold drugs in Richmond they wouldn’t be caught, according to witness testimony.
Wang was later fired after an internal affairs investigation found he’d committed multiple serious policies violations, according to Richmond police.
Jose Vega-Robles, a Sureño gang member, was convicted of first degree murder of Grockett in 2012, but the conviction has since been lowered to second-degree murder on appeal. Sergio Vega-Robles, meanwhile, became a state’s witness and testified in Phillips’ trial last year.
Before being escorted back to jail by courtroom deputies, Phillips turned to face Shawn Pate, the district attorney inspector who investigated the Grockett killing. He gave the inspector a thumbs up and exclaimed, “Good job, Pate!” The inspector replied, “Thanks.”
“I think that other people killed Grockett,” Phillips’ attorney, Dan Horowitz, said. “There were a lot of people who wanted to kill Grockett; Coby had the least motive to do it.”
Phillips has a reputation as being ruthless, but intelligent. He has given multiple jailhouse interviews since his conviction. He still denies killing Grockett, but spoke openly about his life.
The son of a Bay Area meth cook who is currently fighting federal drug trafficking charges, Phillips said he began growing and selling marijuana in his early teens, and once — as an 11-year-old — grabbed a gun and drugs and ran into the woods to hide when his family’s home was raided by police.
As an adult, Phillips headed a Bay Area meth ring, making tens of thousands per week. He spoke about nightly trips to Benihana, but also of about donating money to local zoos and committing other random acts of kindness, lamenting that, “People don’t hear about the good things I’ve done.”
He publicly disavowed the swastika last year — pledging to remove his own swastika tattoos — after reading a detailed account of the Holocaust, and said it was hypocritical for white gangs to wear the Nazi symbol, given that Hitler murdered innocent people.
When he was arrested on federal drug trafficking charges in 2006, Phillips said he had saved more than a half-million dollars with the intention of leaving the meth business and starting a tree nursery with his family in Northern California.
“They say the real gangsters spend their whole lives trying to get out of the life, and the fake ones spend their whole lives trying to stay in it,” Phillips said.
