A New York man who ran as many as 15 drug houses in central Maine received a 20-year prison sentence Tuesday.
Darrell Newton, 39, of Rochester, New York, was sentenced in federal court in Bangor for conspiring to distribute heroin, cocaine base and fentanyl, according to U.S. Attorney Halsey B. Frank.
Newton is also known by the names “Coast” and “D-Coast,” according to Frank.
In addition to serving 20 years in prison, Newton was also sentenced to five years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty to the charges in October 2018.
The operation was active between June 2015 and March 2017, according to court records. Newton recruited and sent people from Rochester, where his operation was based, to central Maine to transport and deal large quantities of heroin, cocaine base and fentanyl.
“They stayed with various local residents who allowed the drugs to be sold from their homes and assisted the Rochester dealers in distributing, storing and transporting the narcotics throughout the region,” Frank said in a prepared statement.
“The local residents were paid in cocaine base or heroin for allowing the Rochester dealers to stay in the residences and sell the drugs.”
There were between 12 and 15 affiliated residences in central Maine during the conspiracy’s height, according to Frank. Some were in Chelsea, Gardiner and Augusta, according to previous indictments.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency and the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office conducted the investigation. Augusta police assisted with the case.
The case was investigated and prosecuted as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Strategy to Combat the Opioid Epidemic, according to Frank.
In September 2018, two of Newton’s co-conspirators were sentenced.
Denton Worrell, also known as “Lil D,” was sentenced to 10 years after pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute and possessing with intent to distribute controlled substances.
Worrell, then 21, identified himself as a “supervisor” of the conspiracy and Newton as the leader, according to a prosecution memo that cites a pre-sentencing report filed at U.S. District Court in Bangor.
The same report notes Worrell “was responsible for finding and staffing trap and stash houses, for receiving the supply of narcotics from Rochester and divvying it up to be dropped-off at trap houses, and receiving the drug proceeds collected from each trap or stash house and providing said money to Brent Hercules to return to (Darrell) Newton in Rochester.”
Jason Folkner, of Gardiner and Augusta, was also sentenced in September 2018 to 72 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Folkner, also known as “Crazy,” was one of the Mainers who allowed his residence to be used as a location where people could buy drugs that came from Rochester.
At least 13 other people have been tied to the case, according to previous reporting from the Kennebec Journal.
Those individuals include Jeffrey Johnson, of Gardiner; Russell Truman, of Gardiner; Donald Morang, of Augusta; Alex Brumfield of Rochester, New York and Augusta; Brent Hercules, also known as “Herc,” of Rochester New York; and Jamie M. Betances, also known as “Booger,” “Booga,” “Buga” and “Ice,” of Rochester, New York.
Betanches was also connected to a drug ring that operated in Somerset County in 2016.
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