Tales of New Jersey heroin runs -- and admonitions to consider who was telling those stories -- characterized Tuesday's opening of the federal jury trial of Robert Dwayne "Dollar Rob" Early.

Facing conspiracy and drug distribution charges, Early is the first among 11 defendants in three recent, linked federal heroin cases to take his chances before a jury.

So far, six people have pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Roanoke to charges ranging from distribution and firearms offenses to supplying the heroin that led to nonfatal overdoses. Authorities have said the cases sparked worries about the spreading use of heroin among young people.

That was not mentioned Tuesday, however, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Wolthuis began describing Early as a heroin importer and defense attorney Melvin Hill warned jurors that the prosecution's chief witnesses hoped to take years off their own prison sentences by cooperating.

Two of Early's co-defendants took the stand to describe how they made numerous trips to New Jersey to buy heroin for Early, sometimes with Early or others riding along.

Paris Eugene Robinson and Safiyyah Amirah Omar testified that starting about 2003, they began traveling to Paterson, N.J., to get the drug from a man who Omar said went by the name "Christ," but who Robinson said was called "Black" when he used any name at all.

Robinson and Omar have both pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute heroin but have not yet been sentenced.

They said they carried sealed Ziploc bags of money from Early -- who melted the zippers' ends, they said, to keep anyone from tampering with the cash -- and often brought back more than 1,000 bags of heroin each trip.

They'd drive straight to Paterson, make the buy, then go to a McDonald's in nearby Clifton, N.J., to clean up, eat and shoot heroin before driving back, they said.

In December 2006, police raided Robinson and Omar's home and found heroin. The pair made one more run to New Jersey under police surveillance and were stopped by Virginia state troopers as they traveled back down Interstate 81. But plans to finish the trip with a controlled drug delivery to Early fell apart when Robinson and Omar's companion on the trip was found snorting heroin in a police interrogation room, testified Tony Ayers, a Roanoke County detective.

Omar and Robinson confessed they had also tried to smuggle back personal stashes, Ayers said.

Hill said that many of the witnesses against his clients had their own drug problems. He pointed out that when police raided the apartment where Early was staying in May 2007, officers found only a torn baggie with heroin residue.

They also found, Wolthuis countered, several marked bills that a police informant said he had just used to buy heroin from Early.

Testimony is scheduled to resume this morning.