Raids Break Up Cocaine Ring Run From Prison

WALPOLE, Mass. — Five inmates of a maximum-security state prison used pay telephones to direct a major cocaine network involving friends and relatives, authorities said Saturday.

The inmates, whose names were not released, used the friends and relatives to buy, sell and distribute large quantities of cocaine outside the Walpole prison and smuggle some drugs to prisoners, Norfolk County Dist. Atty. William Delahunt said.

Authorities said they had been investigating the operation since spring and cracked it Friday when they raided nine homes, arrested six people and seized about 2 1/2 pounds of cocaine worth more than $150,000.

The five inmates had not been charged in connection with the drug ring, but a grand jury will consider whether to return indictments, prosecutors said. They were isolated from the rest of the prison population Saturday.

Authorities tapped the prison pay telephones last month, Delahunt said.

Authorities have not determined how long the network was operating in the prison, but Delahunt estimated that it distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine and a smaller amount of marijuana in the Boston area and as far west as Springfield.

He told the Patriot Ledger of Quincy that it was the first time he knew of that such a large network in a prison had been broken.

Investigators said visitors smuggled cocaine and the synthetic painkiller Dilaudid into the prison, which houses 700 inmates.

Inside the prison, the ringleaders allegedly sold the drugs to fellow inmates by telling them to send money to an outside address, usually that of an inmate’s girlfriend, who would confirm the money had been received before the drugs would be given to the buyer, investigators said.

An inmate of the medium-security prison at Norfolk also was involved, Delahunt said.

Four of the inmates are serving life sentences for first-degree murder, one a 40- to 50-year sentence for home invasion and one a 10- to 12-year sentence for cocaine trafficking, he said.