BOYD COUNTY, Ky. (WSAZ) — Deputies made a dent in the out of state drug trade Sunday.
The Boyd County Sheriff’s Department says it caught Jim Clapper during a search of a house in Ashland. He’s from Pompano Beach, Florida.
Tag Archive for 'drugs'
A year-long undercover operation resulted in 28 arrests Thursday in Russell County.
All except one were charged with drug trafficking and some also received persistent felony offender charges. One person was charged only with receiving stolen property, according to a Kentucky State Police press release.
The people arrested and charged in the morning roundup were considered street or mid-level dealers, according to the release.
By Bill Estep
bestep@herald-leader.com
Young women performed sexual acts hundreds of times the last few years to get drugs from a Laurel County man, federal authorities have charged.
A federal grand indicted Roy Lacy Cobb, 55, on a charge that he illegally distributed oxycodone from June 2005 to May 2008 in Laurel, Knox and Whitley counties.
On Wednesday, a federal grand indicted Roy Lacy Cobb, 55, of Keavy, on a charge that he illegally distributed oxycodone — the ingredient in the powerful, much-abused painkiller OxyContin — from June 2005 to May 2008 in Laurel, Knox and Whitley counties.
What sets Cobb’s case apart from many, however, are allegations about a wretched byproduct of drug abuse that appears to have increased in recent years with the spike in abuse of prescription painkillers.
The epidemic of abuse seems to have hit young women in particular in the last decade, said David Mathews, director of adult services for Kentucky River Community Care, which provides substance-abuse treatment and other services in eight Eastern Kentucky counties.
With that, it’s now typical to hear about women engaging in sex in order to get the pills they need to feed their addiction, he said.
“Men are taking advantage of that,” Mathews said. “It’s tragic.”
At one time, men in substance-abuse treatment outnumbered women by far. These days, the numbers are about equal. Mathews said.
Many women are trapped in abusive relationships because of a man’s ability of a man to provide drugs, Mathews said.
Five young women told authorities that they had either gotten drugs from Cobb in return for sex or had heard about others who did, according to a sworn statement from Detective Richard Dalrymple, who is on a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force based in London.
Dalrymple said that in June, while interviewing Cobb’s daughter Mary Cobb, who is charged with stealing drugs from a pharmacy in London, she said her father got drugs from a doctor in Tennessee and distributed them mostly to young women in exchange for sex.
Authorities began tracking down women who alleged they’d engaged in sex acts to get drugs from Cobb.
One told police that another woman, who later died, told her sometime in 2005 that she could get OxyContin pills from Cobb for sex.
The witness said she went to see Cobb with the other woman. On her first visit, the two women had sex at Cobb’s direction and the witness got one pill, according to Dalrymple’s statement.
The woman said that over the next two years, she visited Cobb about every other day. She paid cash for pills about 50 times, but most days she engaged in sex acts to get pills, she told Dalrymple.
Sometimes she had sex with other women, while at other times she had sex with Cobb or performed oral sex on him, the statement said.
Another woman said that when she first met Cobb in the summer of 2005, he gave her OxyContin free and took her shopping, but later, she had to start performing sex acts to get pills. She got an 80-milligram OxyContin every other day for months, the woman told authorities.
Still another woman told police that Cobb first gave her OxyContin, but when she wanted more, he began demanding sexual favors in return. The woman said at some times, she got an OxyContin pill from Cobb daily; she paid cash or got them free maybe 50 times, but the rest of the time she had to “perform some type of sexual favor on Cobb or at the direction of Cobb” to get the pills, according to the affidavit.
Yet another woman said Cobb bragged about giving pills to young women for sex. He showed her a hidden camera in the ceiling and claimed that he taped videos of himself with young women, Dalrymple said in the statement.
Dalrymple submitted the statement in seeking a warrant to arrest Cobb. Police arrested Cobb at his home in Laurel County Wednesday.
Brad Mitchell, a Laurel County sheriff’s detective who worked in the investigation, said police wanted Cobb in custody before witnesses were to go to the grand jury Wednesday.
Cobb preyed on women in the grip of a powerful addiction, Mitchell said.
“He used that pill as power over them,” Mitchell said.
The investigation in the case is continuing. Cobb might be charged in state court as well as federal court, Mitchell said.
Cobb was arraigned Wednesday afternoon and pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Derek Gordon, was not available for comment.
However, Cobb’s daughter, Christina Kinman, said the allegation that Cobb traded drugs for sex is not true.
“We think it’s ridiculous,” she said.
Kinman said her father has a 2-year-old daughter by a woman with whom he had an affair. That woman has stirred up allegations against Cobb because of a dispute, Kinman said.
Kinman said Cobb once did home repairs, but now receives disability payments and takes heart and blood-pressure medication.
Cobb faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, according to the indictment.
By Bill Estep
bestep@herald-leader.com
A well-known Clay County minister helped launder hundreds of thousands in drug money and hide a federal fugitive, a federal jury has ruled.
The jury convicted Wayne Reid, 60, and his wife Donna Reid, 59, of Burning Springs, late Wednesday.
The Reids had denied any involvement in the crimes. But after deliberating about four hours, jurors convicted them on all the charges they faced.
The jury also said the Reids should pay $800,000 and forfeit about 120 acres of land and three houses because the cash and property were linked to drug trafficking, according to a court record.
Reid had been free on bond before the trial, but U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves ordered him jailed after the verdict at the request of Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen C. Smith.
Reeves allowed Donna Reid to remain free. To stay out of jail, however, she has to come up with $200,000 by Sept. 26 to replace the bond the couple posted earlier.
That’s because that money was “tainted” with drug proceeds, according to an entry in the court record.
The Reids are to be sentenced Jan. 5. They face a maximum of 30 years in prison, though under advisory federal guidelines they will likely get considerably less time behind bars.
Reid, pastor of a large Baptist church, and his wife were accused of scheming to conceal the proceeds of Larry Golden Jackson Jr.’s marijuana business from January 2000 to November 2005.
Jackson allegedly provided drug money the Reids used to buy assets.
Trial testimony showed the Reids bought land and more than $2 million worth of heavy equipment and built houses and a convenience store during the conspiracy, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The Reids took out loans to develop property and then made large “unexplained” cash payments on the loans. They also deposited large amounts of cash at a bank, including $470,000 over eight months in 2000, the release said.
And in January 2005, the Reids gave their daughter some property, then bought it back from her about a month later for $225,000, according to the release.
A federal grand jury indicted Jackson in 2002, but he fled. The Reids were convicted of hiding him for a time while he was a fugitive.
Ultimately, Jackson didn’t return the favor, testifying against the Reids.
Among other things, Jackson said Wayne Reid gave him a Bible before he took off to Arizona to avoid the federal charges, and that he visited the Grand Canyon with the couple while on the lam, according to a story in the Manchester Enterprise.
Police ultimately caught Jackson. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 188 months in prison.
Jackson and a co-defendant, Eugene “Moose” Stewart, also were ordered to pay a $5 million judgment, representing the gross proceeds of the marijuana operation, according to court records.
By Beth Musgrave
bmusgrave@herald-leader.com
One of the most enduring figures in Pineville politics has been indicted again — this time on charges that he conspired to buy votes with money and pills.
The indictment, which was unsealed Wednesday, alleges Pineville Mayor Robert “Bob” Madon, 73, and his son, Brent Madon, 44, used cash and drugs to convince people to vote by absentee ballot for the elder Madon in the November 2006 election.
Only 1,036 people voted in the general election. Of those, 305 were absentee votes, or about one-third of the total votes.
Of those 305 absentee votes cast, Bob Madon received 250, and his opponent received 55, the indictment says. Madon later won the election by a nearly 2-to-1 margin and assumed office on Jan. 1, 2007.
Brent Madon told an unnamed person before the Nov. 7, 2006, election “that if you know of anybody that wanted a ride to go vote, I will give them money and drugs to vote for my father,” the indictment alleges.
On Nov. 6, the younger Madon took a woman to the courthouse so she could vote absentee. When the woman accidentally told the clerk that she would actually be in town on Election Day, Brent Madon took the woman out in the hall and told her what to tell the clerk, the indictment alleges.
Madon later paid the woman for her vote with cash and pills. Then Bob Madon went to the woman’s apartment later that same day and allegedly told her to be out of town on Election Day, the indictment alleges.
Bob Madon said Wednesday night that he has been advised by his attorney not to discuss the charges but said he was “taken aback” by the indictment. He said he has no plans to resign. Samuel Castle of Barbourville, Madon’s attorney, was not available for comment late Wednesday.
Brent Madon also could not be reached for comment.
This is not the Pineville mayor’s first criminal charge.
Bob Madon was convicted in 1987 of nine counts of spending $2,300 of city money on himself, his girlfriend and city employees, but served no jail time. Madon was originally charged with 117 felony counts of misappropriating city money.
Madon was first elected mayor in 1977, the year of a devastating flood, and is credited with bringing a $54 million federal project to build a flood wall topped by a four-lane highway to relieve traffic congestion.
He maintained his innocence during his trial and argued that he had used the money to lobby for grants to rebuild the city. Madon resigned as mayor after his conviction, but he was later pardoned by Gov. Wallace Wilkinson, making him eligible to run for public office.
Since 1977, Madon has served as mayor of Pineville off and on for a total of 18 years, Madon said Wednesday. One of the bypasses around Pineville is called the Bob Madon Bypass in honor of the long-serving mayor.
After Madon resigned in 1987, then-Councilman E.J. Farris compared Madon to Moses, saying Madon was a great leader but was not allowed to go to the Promised Land because he made a mistake, according to a 1987 Herald-Leader article.
The Madons are the latest Eastern Kentucky politicians to be indicted on vote-buying charges. More than a dozen Bath County elected officials and citizens were indicted on charges that the May 2006 primary election was rigged.
In June, Knott County Judge-Executive Randy Thompson was convicted of scheming to buy votes and misusing taxpayers’ money to improve privately owned driveways and to build private bridges. The federal jury also convicted John Mac Combs and Phillip G. Champion, deputies under Thompson, and Ronnie Adams, a former magistrate who now works for the county.
Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Lexington were not available for comment Wednesday.
The Madon indictment was issued July 23 but was not unsealed until Wednesday, according to court records. A court date for the Madons has not been set. If convicted, both could receive a maximum of 30 years in federal prison.
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