A confidential informant gave
an investigator in the Athens County prosecutor’s office a tip in late
February: This prescription-drug ring? It’s huge.
Now, authorities say, they have
dismantled an operation that might have put as much as $3 million worth of
painkillers on the streets of southeastern Ohio with the arrest on Friday of a
former Detroit police officer. He is accused of being the architect of the
business and the supplier.
As if unraveling a sweater,
investigators tugged at each lead they came across after that tip, trying to
trace the criminal enterprise. They had so far arrested nearly a dozen suspects
— including a former Chauncey, Ohio, police chief — but there had been nothing
quite like what happened on Friday.
That’s when, on the order of
Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn and armed with a 12-count indictment
that includes racketeering, drug-possession and aggravated drug-trafficking
charges, authorities arrested Brandon Jorge Allen at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson
International Airport.
Blackburn, speaking by phone
yesterday from Detroit, where he was overseeing the issuance of a search
warrant, said that Allen, 29, was trying to leave the country. The U.S.
Marshals Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of
Homeland Security helped to stop him.
Federal authorities said
yesterday they aren’t sure when Allen will be brought back to Ohio to answer to
the charges.
How did an ex-cop from Michigan
— one who in 2008 pleaded guilty to extortion charges stemming from an attempt
to force a store clerk to pay to avoid arrest — end up in Athens?
“Mr. Allen said Athens County
was a gold mine,” Blackburn said.
“For years, he’s been the
source of a drug that is ruining the lives of our citizens.”
The indictment says the drug
ring dealt almost exclusively in the high-powered painkiller oxycodone, which
generally sells for about $1 a milligram on the streets.
Svea Maxwell is prevention
coordinator with the
317 Board, which oversees
addiction and mental-health services in Athens, Hocking and Vinton counties.
She said these recent
high-profile drug arrests are making a difference: “The community is happy to
see the action.”
Many agencies are working
together to make a dent in the drug business, and that’s great, she said, but
she hopes an equal focus is put on treatment in the aftermath of the criminal
cases.
“We hope this opens roads and
pathways to get people help,” she said. “The crime comes from people trying to
feed their own addiction.”
Blackburn said that’s not the
case with Allen. He’s a businessman, not an addict, the prosecutor said.
Records show that when Allen
was convicted on a federal charge of “extortion under color of official right”
in August 2008, he was sentenced to one day in prison and given credit for time
served. The Athens indictment alleges that he started trafficking drugs in
Athens County in early 2009.
Blackburn said this is the
largest narcotics investigation ever undertaken locally. He said the entire
operation centered on the village of Glouster but affected the nearby villages
of Murray City, Nelsonville, The Plains and Chauncey, as well as communities in
Meigs County.
He said locals would meet Allen
or his runners in the parking lots of businesses on I-75 in Perrysburg in
northern Ohio and carry the drugs back to Appalachia. Allen also sometimes
traveled to Athens County himself.
After several Athens County
residents were arrested in recent months, the road led to Detroit and Allen,
who owns a business there called Star Status Music Group.
The cooperation of the others
was critical to Allen’s arrest, Blackburn said.
“I think some people saw this
train wasn’t stopping, and they decided to get first-class seats while some
were still available,” he said.
Assistant Prosecutor John
Haseley said the resources mustered locally for the investigation were
unprecedented. Blackburn said that when time is factored in, it’s probably a
$100,000 investigation so far, and it isn’t done.
It has taken detectives and
prosecutors to West Virginia and South Carolina. Recorded jail calls and
social-media accounts have played a key role in deciphering who is involved,
Blackburn said.
The indictment shows that
authorities are moving to take Allen’s business and personal property in
Detroit and a 2004 Buick LeSabre through forfeiture. They also seized a 2014
Mercedes-Benz worth more than $100,000.
