‘Major’ drug ring busted after police seize $3.8M worth of cocaine in Middle Georgia
The bust of a “major drug distribution” ring that included the seizure of a cocaine shipment worth nearly $4 million has landed more than a dozen Middle Georgians in jail, law enforcement officials in Houston County announced Thursday.
A November investigation into illegal drug sales led cops to an alleged drug-trafficking network that was said to involve the “large-scale distribution of cocaine and marijuana” across the region.
On March 4, an 87-pound shipment of cocaine was intercepted along with nearly $285,000 cash, which was found in a “hidden compartment” in a Texas man’s tractor-trailer rig, the officials said.
A pair of Macon men, Dexter Lee Williams, 51, and Curtis Eugene Thorpe, 47 — since jailed on drug-distribution and racketeering charges — were said to be in possession of the cocaine, the statement noted.
Williams and Thorpe have past drug-crime convictions here.
In November 2007, Williams pleaded guilty in federal court to a marijuana-distribution charge that prosecutors said was part of an illicit, two-year operation that conspired to peddle more than 100 kilograms of pot. He was sentenced to 37 months in prison.
In February 1996, Thorpe was arrested on a cocaine-trafficking charge after cops caught him and another man near the old Colonial Bakery on Columbus Road. Vice-squad investigators at the time said Thorpe was a leading drug supplier in the Unionville neighborhood.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, of which he served about three and a half behind bars, before being released in late 1999.
A decade later in Oct. 2009, Thorpe pleaded guilty in federal court to cocaine-distribution and was sentenced to nearly six years in prison. He was released less than four years later in 2013.
Investigators in this month’s case said that other people arrested in connection with the sting have been charged with racketeering. They include:
▪ Loretta McLan Williams, 51, of Macon
▪ Francisco Daniel Costilla, 30, of Edinburg, Texas
▪ Kelton Keshawn Mims, 39, Eastman
▪ Oliver Oneal King, 50, Tucker
▪ Sirad Little, 46, Perry
▪ Donovan Jamal Williams, 30, Macon
▪ Joe Ben Sears Jr., 37, Macon
▪ Jonathan James Shaver, 30, Perry
▪ Christopher Anthony Burner, 46, Forsyth
▪ Lemark Williams, 47, Macon
▪ Darien Cantrell Harris, 38, Thomaston
▪ Christopher Thompson, 46, Lithonia
▪ Benjamin Maurice Kendall, 39, Macon
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 10:22 AM.