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by Mike Donoghue, Vermont News First
A Burlington School Board member has resigned from his newly elected office after he was charged in Massachusetts in a felony drug trafficking case, officials said.
Massachusetts State Police said they arrested Rida M. Kori, 24, of Riverside Avenue on a heroin/fentanyl trafficking charge after he was stopped on Interstate 91 in Holyoke, Mass. on Sept. 16.
The vehicle contained 4,300 individual glassine envelopes believed to contain heroin/fentanyl and an unspecified amount of cash, state police said.
About 1,300 doses were found in the glove compartment of the Vermont registered Chrysler, police said. It was found by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Timothy Hoffman, who was formerly assigned to Vermont.
Another 3,000 doses were located in a portable safe located in the trunk of the car, but Kori denied the safe belonged to him, State Trooper Michael DeCaro reported.
Kori appeared in Holyoke (Mass.) District Court on Sept. 17 and was released on $10,000 cash bail by Judge William Hadley, a court spokeswoman said Monday.
Kori is due back in court on Thursday, she said.
News about the out-of-state drug arrest eventually began to circulate to police in Vermont, a spokesman said.
The Vermont-registered white 2015 Chrysler 200 with dark tint became known to the DEA in Springfield, Mass. on July 23, DeCaro said. The regional drug task force was working on an unrelated case at the Red Roof Inn in Enfield, Conn. — a known high level drug trafficking area — about 10 miles south of Springfield, officials said.
Kori, who was born in Sudan, has overcome adversity in his young life and is a product of the city school system.
Kori did not respond to a phone message from Vermont News First seeking comment.
Burlington School Board Chair Clare Wool said she was disappointed.
“On behalf of the Burlington School Board I want to thank Commissioner Kori for his volunteer service and I have accepted his verbal resignation due to personal circumstances,” Wool said.
“At this time it would be inappropriate for me to discuss anything further,” she said in an email to Vermont News First.
The Burlington School Board is scheduled to meet tonight (Tuesday), but the resignation apparently came too late for the printed agenda.
Kori, who was unopposed for a two-year term in March to represent Ward 1, also was an assistant soccer coach at Burlington High in 2023, but not this year, according to the school district website.
Kori is a graduate of Burlington High School where he was part of a state championship soccer team in 2016. The midfielder later attended Castleton University and eventually transferred to Central Connecticut State University to play Division I soccer for his final two years.
While at Burlington High, Kori was involved in mentoring at-risk youth, according to his LinkedIn page.
His twin brother, Ramzi Kori, 24, who also played soccer at BHS, faced his own felony drug and gun charges earlier in both New York and Vermont, records show.
It was during the July 23 surveillance in the unrelated case that the DEA in Springfield, Mass. spotted the Vermont license plate on the Chrysler, which was registered to Rida Kori, police said. They linked him to his brother, Ramzi Kori, who was busted by the DEA in Vermont in 2021.
The latest drug investigation in Massachusetts showed Rida Kori’s car had made several quick trips to neighborhoods in Springfield, Mass. and Enfield, Conn. known for drug trafficking before heading back north toward Vermont, state police said.
The experience of trained investigators shows those short duration traffic patterns have been observed with other narcotics traffickers, DeCaro said in court papers.
Part of the recent trip on Sept. 16 was monitored by the Massachusetts State Police, the DEA and other task force members, records show. A decision was made by investigators to pull over Kori following some stops he had made, including for about 10 minutes at a hotel room at the Red Roof Inn in Enfield, officials said.
It was shortly after investigators began chatting with him on the roadside in Holyoke, Mass. that Kori said he wanted a lawyer, police said. Police had become suspicious because his statements on his travels did not match where they had seen him stop, DeCaro said.
Kori’s car was impounded and he was taken to the state police barracks in Northampton where he again asked for a lawyer, police said. The interviewing ended and eventually was charged, police said.
After graduating from Central Connecticut in New Britain, Conn. with a degree in finance, Kori returned to Burlington and decided to go into coaching, according to the Burlington School District website. It noted Kori was an assistant soccer coach at BHS and also was a coach for Peak Football Academy — previously known as Synergy Football Club, where he had played.
“Giving back to the community is important to him because of all the support he has received growing up and believes now it’s his turn to give a lending hand,” the Burlington School District website said.
His brother, Ramzi Kori, had separate drug arrests by New York State Police in Saratoga County in August 2020 and by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Vermont in July 2021. In each case Ramzi Kori was carrying a loaded gun, police said.
Ramzi Kori was given several breaks by the courts during his drug cases. In the New York case he avoided prison time in early 2021 when a state judge opted to only place him on probation until March 2026 based on his young age, 21, at the time of the offense.
Four months later he was arrested in Vermont after he was pulled over in a Land Rover in Richmond with about 6,850 bags of fentanyl-laced heroin, a loaded 9-mm Sig Sauer handgun, $2,500 in cash and three cell phones in Richmond, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said.
The DEA said it was looking for the owner of the Land Rover for a federal arrest warrant in another drug case, but instead found Kori at the wheel.
Investigation showed Ramzi Kori had about $58,000 in various financial accounts and had been dealing drugs since 2020, officials said.
Ramzi Kori, who was on his way back from Massachusetts, eventually received a 3-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to possession with intent to distribute heroin and possession of a firearm by a felon, records show.
The federal sentencing guidelines had suggested a minimum of 51 months and a maximum of 63 months, but Judge Christina Reiss cut the penalty to 36 months.
Ramzi Kori was supposed to be on supervised release for three years after he got out of prison, but defense lawyer Brooks G. McArthur last month petitioned the court to let him off just after one year. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan A. Ophardt had objected.
Judge Reiss agreed to remove Ramzi Kori from supervised conditions on Sept. 18, one day after McArthur’s motion, court records now show.
A feature sports story in the Register, the award-winning BHS student newspaper, reported in November 2022 about Rida Kori and another former teammate both returning to help coach as assistants in the Burlington school soccer program.
Register Staff Writer Georgia Wool quoted Kori and his sidekick as wanting to serve as role models for the young players.
“I want to help them improve their style of play,” Kori said. “But also get schoolwork done and go to classes because they are student athletes” the newspaper quoted Kori as saying.
That career goal now appears to be extinguished.
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Categories: Burlington, Drugs and Crime
Does this surprise anyone that a Burlington School Board member (voted into the position) AND his twin brother are both busted for fentanyl and heroin trafficing?
“Giving back to the community is important to him because of all the support he has received growing up and believes now it’s his turn to give a lending hand,” the Burlington School District website said.
The entire city of Burlington is a mess.
“While at Burlington High, Kori was involved in mentoring at-risk youth, according to his LinkedIn page.” This could be inferred as predatory intent.
You are on it Renee! Wow!
It’s called networking in the drug world, he wasn’t there to help the kids, he was there to build a drug running operation. This article is so interesting. This is a classic example of look at what they do, not what they say.
By his actions he loved getting people hooked on drugs and making money, those are the things he loved most. Those were his idols.
This type of stuff is going on in Vermont DAILY…..he “overcame” struggles, he was a minority, he was from a foreign country……..his plight.
No, he was and is a drug dealer preying upon your children. He does not LOVE the kids, somebody who loves your children, does not sell them hardcore drugs.
Wake up Burlington.
Could work for a big box store, because he surely would not have passed a background check, but he’s leading our schools and children. THAT IS THE PROBLEM.
No he would never talk about drugs or recruit anyone. He was a coach for soccer and never once talked about illegal activities or substances
Do drug dealers announce in public what they do?
Do thieves call you in advance to let you know they are going to steal?
If somebody rapes you, and then takes you out to a fancy restaurant after, does that make everything Ok?
Wonder why he needed so many drugs if he never recruited or sold them?
He had a great personality, I get it, what he was doing is utterly insane. NOT GOOD.
Con-man? Sociopath? He most certainly was NOT loving his neighbors, he was killing them.
You’ve been duped, big time. We all have, he’s not what he appeared to be, come into reality.
poor Tom
William Stevenson–“poor Tom” Apparently another Tom is on the scene. Taint me, from southern VT. This Tom went to Burlington HS. Guess I;ll modify my logo to Tom C
Waiting for the comments.
The silence in other forms of media is what I’m looking for.
This is a pretty big story on many counts. Will be most interesting on how it is spun. The biggest tell is if nobody covers this event. This would be front page news of the Burlington Free Press, if there was such an organization. It would be discussed at the debate, probably not even mentioned.
Sometimes the most important things are never mentioned nor discussed.
One thing for sure, there will be no discussion of gangs.
That word is forbidden in Vermont at all levels.
There should be no forbidden words, that is the ultimate form of control.
Meanwhile gangs run free in our state, and they are only here to spread good cheer, surely!
While public school parent volunteers are subjected to mandatory background checks, persons with ill intent can be elected to office – no background check.
Still haven’t had enough citizens of Burlington? How high is your tolerance for pain and suffering? Progressives are the worst kind. They need this rubbed into their proverbial noses along with the unmitigated mayhem they have brought to a once great city.
While public school parent volunteers are required to go through a mandatory background check, some persons, either unsuitable or with malintent, are elected to serve on school boards and other positions in government.
In Burlington, there is what’s known as the “diversity exception” to any requirement for a background check. It’s kind of like the acknowledgement that asking a person of color for a government ID to cast a vote is an overt act of racism while demanding an ID to attend the democrat national convention is not racism. Just another liberal double-standard.
Mr. Kori would not be in the drug dealing operations if he did not have willing
Vermont buyers. Lets have the names of all the buyers and you might be surprised as who they are.
kori
I’d like to say “only in Burlington could this happen” but I’d probably be wrong
I believe that ANYONE who is employed by a school, or any type of connection with a school supposed to be finger-printed and have a background check or am I mistaken?
Thanks again to Vermont’s foremost reporter of crime issues that affect us all, Mike Donoghue. This story has Burlington’s permissive crime culture and the whole concept of celebrating diversity all wrapped up with a bow. However, reporting the facts of the story of this man’s and his brother’s activities still fail to impress that the business that they have CHOSEN to involve themselves in results in the deaths of over 100,000 Americans annually. Somehow we fail to associate human faces of the dealers and their ill intent when we have these “overdose awareness rallies” and dig for “root causes” and promote the concept of addiction as a “disease”. These two are merchants of death and their acts of greed and malevolence need to be acknowledged, but progressives will treat them as victims, who are only doing what they had to do to “manage their disease in the best way they know how, while living in an uncaring and systemically racist society”. The brother, who was engaged in dealing drugs while federally prohibited from possessing guns should have been sent to club fed for 10 years, by Judge Reiss, whose own father was killed by the irresponsible use of a gun. We have tough federal gun laws on the books and if they are not used to keep dangerous scum locked up, politicians have no business continuing to impose more restrictions on the law-abiding.
Biting the hand that fed him (and housed him, and educated him, and employed him, ad nauseum). And this is what America gets. You know what? Sudan deserves him and brother back!!
The painful irony is that even sh!thole countries like Sydan don’t want to take them back.
Trump wants to have the Death penality for drug dealers.☠️
Burlington Area Small Business Award in 3…2…1…
Fentanyl dealers Ben.
It is Death to Fentanyl dealers.
Anyone else predicting a Burlington Area Small Business Award for this piece of sh!t?
With all those ‘advantages’… still couldn’t make a go of it… what’s wrong with this picture?
With the economy in VT tanking so fast we can hardly catch our breath over the past four years… its does start is to look like dealing in one of the few guaranteed job security jobs for a college grad… all that business education and stuff…
And if school boards got’em… you know the rest of the mice we can’t see are livin’ it up! Pahty! Pahty! The ship’s goin’ down… might as well pahty while it is! Titanic woot!
Unsinkable Vermont… pshawwww!
Evil prick elected by a majority of wing nuts and fruit loops…what ya see is what ya get. VOTE TEAM TRUMP<VOTE GOP!
In “giving back to the community” he was actually killing its inhabitants. And Claire Wool says she “want to thank commissioner Rida for his volunteer service“ ……… These equity obsessed ivory tower libs are impossible for people with brains to stomach.
AH—the poor guy is just trying to make a little disposable income to pay VT taxes. Taxes in VT is certainly disposed. He has just a different job title. Liberals understand this.
But….but….but……we need to celebrate diversity and show compassion.
Hope you’re enjoying it all, Burlington. Stop voting blue.
Neil-
Tuning in to VPR today:
No mention of this story. Shocking.
Then NPR runs a “story” about the decreasing availability and potency of the US fentanyl supply! Good news!! Nothing to see here!
Just another member of the cesspool known as Burlington, this goes to show that the Burlington school district will hire anyone, this DEI hire, I guess with “no” background check fits right in the progressive nonsense in the city.
This clown had the world by the Azz, a good guy, too bad he had a car full of illegal drugs, the school board should be proud of their selected one.
The BTV school district wont hire just ANYONE. They must possess the same ethnic/sexual minority qualifications that President Biden invoked when he picked his press secretary, his vice president and a supreme court justice. And let’s be realistic…a few overdose deaths and more addicted individuals is a small price to pay when there is the opportunity for a significant act of virtue signaling through overtly celebrating diversity. Choosing employees based on merit and ignoring their liabilities is an outdated concept that should be thrown on the ash heap of history.
Who cares.
The real problem is that the useless school board has zero interest in academic performance.
The latest student competency test scores shows outrageous failure rates.
And it’s even more hard to accept in light of the city’s record-breaking education taxes.
What a town.
What’s even worse with the test scores is that the city’s most vulnerable population – the kids for whom English is a second language – are getting lip service from the administration when it comes to making sure they are academically prepared once they finish their schooling.
“Inclusion” in Burlington is a pretense created by the rich white folks who put on a facade at their cocktail parties of caring for the poorest, least-educated amongst us.
Shame on them. Shame on all of us.
I have recently graduated Burlington High School and I played on the soccer team. Although it seems like Rida is a bad guy he’s a villian not a monster. At school and at soccer practice and whenever he is around young individuals he inspires people and never once talks about illegal activities or substances. It’s a shame the comments say that he was trying to recruit people because of the position he is in. People forget all the good things someone has done because of a few mistakes.
“A few mistakes”…
An obvious dealer mobile with smoked windows, lugging thousands of vials of fentanyl-laced heroin into your neighborhood. Mistakes.
Check yourself, “Tom”.
His brother was selling too. It was a family business, it seems. Call it a few mistakes if you want, I don’t agree.
Maybe you should read some of the obituaries of those addicts who were introduced to the Kori Brothers’ fine product as young high schoolers.
And if you believe he left his business at the door when he entered BHS, I have a bridge to sell you.
Would a drug dealer make a public announcement at sports events?
Hey, just to let everybody know, I’m a major fentanyl dealer, if you want anything just let me know on side.
It’s called a cover. Sure, he enjoyed being with kids. It provided an excellent cover too. Please, people need to use their brains.
yea, we shouldn’t let one bad apple spoil the bunch, like leftists routinely do with Catholic Priests and white police officers…
Why did you come on board and just Used “Tom”. I’m “Tom” and not you You went to BHS, I went the SHS Spfld. Commenters are cussing you out, I never was cussed for my opinion, now I might gave trouble changing my logo. , Our email addresses can’t be the same. Why did VDC allow this–and make confusion?
Why is no one questioning the minimal or light sentencing both of these brothers received? Maybe, just maybe, if we put drug dealers away for a minimum, no questions asked, ten year sentence – maybe things might start to change? Ad if ten doesn’t have the desired effect? Make it twenty!
One would think that with the surveillance state we have now, law enforcement could just run a simple query on whose cell phone is making many back and forth short trips to known drug distribution points. Identify the owners, get a warrant, and go at it. Not that I’m in any way in favor of our surveillance state, but if we’re gonna have it, maybe we should use it for what it was intended for.
And just think of all the jobs that would be created by building and staffing new prisons! The left is all about “creating jobs”, right? Seems like a bi-partisan thing everyone could come together on!
But it would put the left in a dilemma, wouldn’t it? Keep the nominal sentencing or create new jobs? I’d just enjoy watching their heads explode.
Burlington School Board Chair Clare Wool said she was disappointed.
“On behalf of the Burlington School Board I want to thank Commissioner Kori for his volunteer service and I have accepted his verbal resignation due to personal circumstances,” Wool said.
who votes for these people? He’s a drug dealer, raised in Vermont with his brother drug dealer, free rides his whole life, college scholarships the whole deal, but in the end, he deals fentanyl FENTANYL the leading killer of our youngest Vermonters, lock him up!
The truly interesting part is that Brooke Page recently shared a letter on Facebook stating that due to the Fentanyl crisis, Vermont has changed the way it handles the opening of mail in ballots. Ballots will now be opened by one person in a locked room for public safetybduevto possible fentanyl contamination. The letter was issued by the State.