{"id":130782,"date":"2026-03-05T23:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T23:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/130782\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T23:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T23:20:12","slug":"gang-related-drug-ring-busted-in-the-lehigh-valley-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/130782\/","title":{"rendered":"Gang-Related Drug Ring Busted in the Lehigh Valley | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More than a dozen alleged drug dealers are now behind bars after an undercover operation in Allentown. Investigators call it &#8220;Operation Bloodhound&#8221; and they say it puts a major dent in drug traffic in the Lehigh Valley. WFMZ&#8217;s Eve Tannery joins us in the studio now with the very latest. Eve Tannery: Wendy and Jaciel&#8230; Investigators say many of the suspects have ties to New York and New Jersey. But, they were living in our area using Allentown as a major hub for selling drugs.; [ 6PM REPORT ] [ NEWS RELEASE ] [ PHOTOS OF ALLEGED DRUG RING MEMBERS (pdf) ] TANNERY: Investigators say they&#8217;re the faces behind a major drug trafficking ring that&#8217;s moved 5 million dollars worth of cocaine into the Valley over the last year. CORBETT: &#8220;The demand for drugs, coupled with high profit potential is the main reason these dealers move into Pennsylvania and spread their crime.&#8221; One of the key locations, police say The V-I-P Barber Shop in center city Allentown. It was raided yesterday. So far, investigators have seized 9 kilos of cocaine worth 1.1 million dollars, 53 pounds of marijuana, 10 guns, and at least one bullet proof vest. Shelton Brown allegedly ran the network. CORBETT: &#8220;Brown and a number of individuals he was associated with were members of the notorious Bloods street gang. Brown sold 3 or more kilos of cocaine per week.&#8221; Attorney General Corbett says wiretaps revealed that Brown&#8217;s customers were mainly located in Allentown. Corbett identified Thomas Woods, of Easton, as the ring&#8217;s mains supplier and more than a dozen others were arrested on charges, they, too, were involved in the ring. Two of them youth workers who we told you about last week&#8230;. Oni Chambers, who was a counselor at Kids Peace. Hasshan Batts, who worked for Northwestern Human Services. All in all, investigators say what they recovered in &#8220;Operation Bloodhound&#8221; was a recipe for violence. CORBETT: &#8220;The amount of weapons and drugs seized as part of this investigation clearly demonstrates how dangerous this drug organization was.&#8221; And this isn&#8217;t the end of &#8220;Operation Bloodhound.&#8221; Attorney General Corbett says there will likely be more arrests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than a dozen alleged drug dealers are now behind bars after an undercover operation in Allentown. Investigators&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,139],"class_list":["post-130782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}