Yeah, dirt common but generally speaking, frowned upon in the drug enforcement circles. It usually indicates there was a more authentic bad guy operating in the same jurisdiction who had been given a pass while his law enforcement buddies were making quota arrests at the expense of some relatively innocent schmucks.

The comeback is always a variation of "well he did the crime right"?, thus schmuck still does prison time except he stays a low level schmuck but with a criminal record that means he always has the rep but rarely gets the payoff. Probably had little or nothing to offer in trade for a better plea bargain, so you see a lot of that breed doing hard time and if they clean up, maybe even go vigilante when they get out, figuring the drug world owes them something. Then the dealers who set them up have all sorts of street credibility problems when a few of these schmucks gang up and are back in the old neighborhood only to find out the dealer who was getting let go all of the time is the landlord of half the neighborhood, has grandsons in the police department and everyone knows he owes something to those who did the time for him. Sometimes they get paid off, sometimes not.