Ex-Station Square club owner who laundered heroin money gets more prison time

A former Station Square nightclub owner convicted of plotting to sell cocaine while already on probation for masterminding a multi-state heroin ring will spend another year and four months behind bars, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Vernon Jackson, 50, a former music producer who has ties to Dormont, Robinson and Pittsburgh’s Banksville and Brookline neighborhoods, also must spend six years on probation following his release from prison, U.S. Attorney Scott W. Brady said.

Jackson pleaded guilty to the cocaine charge before U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti in May.

Another charge is pending for Jackson violating the terms of his probation tied to Jackson’s prior federal case.

In 2004, when Jackson was 36, a grand jury indicted Jackson and seven others in a heroin ring that involved a major supplier in New Jersey. Federal prosecutors said that Jackson used two since-shuttered clubs — Chauncy’s and Rock Jungle — to launder the drug money.

He was sentenced in 2006 to more than 15 years in prison, but released early.

Last March, Pittsburgh’s narcotics and vice unit executed a search warrant at Jackson’s Brookline residence and turned up several bags of cocaine, two digital scales and drug packaging material in the kitchen, prosecutors said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy M. Lanni prosecuted the case with help from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, IRS, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Pittsburgh Police and federally coordinated Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force.