Federal authorities have arrested over twenty people in a drug trafficking ring that spanned three college campuses in North Carolina.
This was not a case of a few people selling small amounts of marijuana out of a dorm room. It was an operation worth over a million dollars.
Stephanie Pagones reports at FOX News:
Major drug ring busted that fed pot, cocaine to 3 North Carolina collegesFraternity members and students from the University of North Carolina and Duke University were part of a massive drug trafficking ring that for years funneled drugs into three college campuses, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.Federal law enforcement agents most recently charged 21 people in connection with the scheme following an investigation that began in November 2018.The illegal drug activity involved members of chapters of Phi Gamma Delta, Kappa Sigma, and Beta Theta Pi fraternities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between 2017 and the spring of 2020, according to court filings.The drug ring funneled more than a half-ton of marijuana, several hundred kilograms of cocaine and significant quantities of other drugs into UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University and Appalachian State University, prosecutors said.Prosecutors said the total amount of money made through the trafficking scheme was not immediately available, but exceeded $1,500,000.The suspects range in age from 21 to 35, with the majority being in their mid-20s. It’s unclear how many are or were students at the three schools.
The investigation has been going on for two years, and the people involved are going to see real jail time.
NBC News has more:
While the investigation continues, officials said a primary supplier was Francisco Javier Ochoa, 27, of Turlock, California. He supplied about 200 pounds of marijuana and 2 kilograms of cocaine on a weekly basis to North Carolina co-defendants, authorities said.He pleaded guilty to federal narcotics charges in November and was sentenced to 73 months behind bars…”I want to make it very clear, this is not a situation where you have casual users, where you have a 19-year-old sipping a beer or you have someone taking a puff off a joint on the back porch of the fraternity house,” he said.”These are 21 hardened drug dealers. This conspiracy moved thousands of pounds of marijuana over the course of several years, hundreds of kilos of cocaine.”
This video report from Dana Perino at FOX News suggests the ring even had a connection to a Mexican cartel:
Fraternities are already under fire in higher education. This case will do nothing to help that.
Featured image via YouTube.
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