A 34-year-old Fort Lauderdale man who led a Broward County chapter of the Bloods was sentenced to 90 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to illegally possessing firearms and conspiring to smuggle narcotics into the jail where he was being held. Michael Ridley’s case stretched from a shooting-range video posted to social media to an alleged scheme to disguise liquid synthetic drugs as legal mail.
U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian handed down the sentence, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, after Ridley pleaded guilty to possessing firearms as a convicted felon, attempting to possess contraband in prison, and conspiring to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute. As reported by West Orlando News, Ridley led the Eastside Gangsta Bloods, a set that operates as part of the United Blood Nation.
A Shooting Range Video Led Investigators to Ridley
According to court records cited in the West Orlando News report, investigators obtained a criminal complaint on June 12, 2025, charging Ridley with unlawfully possessing firearms after he posted a social media video showing him with two handguns at a shooting range. The same court records reportedly show the video included a notation reading “TTB (Train to Bag)” — a phrase that, per those records, referenced a homicide victim’s body being placed in a bag and removed from a crime scene.
Ridley was arrested on July 23, 2025. At the time of his arrest, law enforcement found him in possession of a firearm that had previously been reported stolen, fitted with an attached extended magazine, the outlet’s reporting states. The U.S. government sought his pretrial detention, and a court ordered him held. He was subsequently kept as a federal detainee at two facilities in Broward County.
Smuggling Narcotics Disguised as Legal Mail
While detained, Ridley conspired with outside accomplices, including other gang members, to smuggle narcotics into jail disguised as legal mail addressed to him, per the same account. The scheme reportedly relied on a method known as paper dope, which involves saturating ordinary sheets of paper with liquid synthetic drugs — a smuggling technique federal authorities have flagged in other Florida cases, including allegations that fentanyl was applied to paper and delivered to a federal prison by drone, according to the Eastern District of California U.S. Attorney’s Office…