BUTLER, Pa. (EYT) \u2014 Thirteen individuals have been charged in connection with an alleged cocaine trafficking organization that investigators say made hundreds of trips from Ohio to western Pennsylvania over the past year.<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday announced on Friday, October 16, that the charges followed a joint investigation involving the Office of the Attorney General\u2019s Bureau of Narcotics Investigation, Pennsylvania State Police and several federal and local law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n
According to investigators, seven upper-level drug dealers operating out of Youngstown, Ohio, regularly traveled to Butler County to distribute cocaine and crack cocaine.<\/p>\n
Authorities allege the drugs were sold directly to buyers or distributed through intermediaries living in Butler County.<\/p>\n
The 13 defendants face felony corrupt organization charges, drug trafficking offenses, and related crimes.<\/p>\n
Five of the seven Ohio-based defendants were arrested in Ohio earlier this week, while authorities continue efforts to locate two others.<\/p>\n
Investigators said the Butler County-based dealers involved in the alleged operation were compensated with cash or drugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis criminal organization made routine, sometimes daily, trips into Pennsylvania to distribute poisons into our communities,\u201d Sunday said. \u201cWorking with our partners, these arrests effectively shut down a major cocaine trafficking pipeline.\u201d<\/p>\n
The investigation involved the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Pennsylvania State Police, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Butler County District Attorney\u2019s Office, and Butler City Police Department.<\/p>\n
Statewide Investigative Grand Jury proceedings were also part of the investigation.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Marshals Service is assisting authorities with ongoing efforts to take the remaining defendants into custody.<\/p>\n
The cases will be prosecuted by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General\u2019s Drug Strike Force Section.<\/p>\n
All defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUTLER, Pa. (EYT) \u2014 Thirteen individuals have been charged in connection with an alleged cocaine trafficking organization that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3027,4112,4599,28,4601,30,29,1419,126573],"class_list":["post-308940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-butler","tag-butler-county","tag-dave-sunday","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-attorney-general","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-western-pennsylvania","tag-youngstown-ohio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308940","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=308940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}