AUGUSTA — After less than a year of trafficking in cocaine and heroin, a Waterville man told police he was “making a killing” buying the drugs on the cheap from a supplier in Portland and bringing them to Waterville for resale at more than double the price.

Brian M. Danaher, 30, of Waterville was getting about 100 grams of heroin per trip and buying the heroin and cocaine for $60 a gram. He then sold crack cocaine for $160 a gram and heroin for $200 per gram, according to a sentencing memo filed by prosecutor Francis Griffin.

Danaher was sentenced Monday at the Capital Judicial Center to 12 years in prison. He had pleaded guilty in the same courthouse Dec. 10, 2015, to two counts of aggravated trafficking in drugs and agreed to forfeit a flat-screen television, his interest in a 2010 Ford Focus he said he bought with drug proceeds and $5,350 cash.

In exchange for his pleas to those charges, five other drug-related charges and one count of endangering the welfare of a child were dismissed.

According to a sentencing memo by the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Francis Griffin, when police raided Danaher’s apartment at 5 a.m. Aug. 21, 2015, Danaher led them to a plastic New York Giants container that contained a digital scale, pills, cocaine base and heroin and to thousands in cash, all of which was in a bedroom where he and his 5-year-old daughter slept in bunk beds. He also showed them other drugs contained in a cellphone box in the kitchen. Danaher’s mother and her boyfriend were also asleep in the apartment at the time of the raid.

In all, a state chemist determined that Danaher had 104.7 grams of crack cocaine, 91.1 grams of acetylfentanyl, and 133 Oxycodone 30 milligram pills. Police estimated the drugs had a street value of $45,000.

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Danaher told police he bought the drugs from Moses Okot. The prosecutor noted the two men met in prison when Okot was serving a sentence for felony murder for driving the getaway car in a 2010 killing in Portland. Okot is in custody facing new federal and state charges.

Danaher, formerly of Clinton, had been sentenced in June 2011 for trafficking in scheduled drugs, also in Waterville. He received an eight-year jail sentence, all but two years suspended, three years’ probation, and forfeited $2,080.

In this most recent trafficking, Danaher said he used 4-5 grams of heroin a day, sold the drugs to support his habit and intended to purchase a “brick,” a kilogram of heroin, on his next trip, according to Griffin’s memo.

“While it is conceded that the defendant had a very serious drug addiction, his drug enterprise far exceeded the necessary output required to support an addiction even as large as that of the defendant … This is not the conduct of an addict selling to support a drug habit. It is the conduct of a drug trafficker,” Griffin wrote in urging a 25-year sentence for Danaher.

There was no sentencing memo in the court file from Danaher’s defense attorney, David Geller.

The 12-year sentence imposed Monday is concurrent to a six-year probation revocation from the previous conviction.

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Betty Adams — 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @betadams

 


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