MS Coast man who sent drug-infused mail to federal prisons is now heading there himself

A Mississippi Coast man will spend over eight years in prison after he pleaded guilty to sending drug-laced letters to penitentiaries in a smuggling ring across the country.

Johnson Tran, 47, of Long Beach was sentenced last week in U.S. District Court in Gulfport. He will spend 99 months in prison on a charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance.

The Bureau of Prisons informed Drug Enforcement Agents in 2018 that it intercepted laced letters and greeting cards at prisons in Illinois, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi.

Federal authorities have said ink in the letters was was drenched in synthetic cannabinoids, which are Schedule I controlled substances smoked for psychoactive effect.

Inmates used coded language to order the drugs from Tran through prison email accounts and jail calls, the news release said.

The drug trafficking ring was based in Harrison County, and many of the laced letters were sent through the postal service in Gulfport, according to federal authorities. Financial records showed Tran got paid for the drugs through Department of Treasury checks drawn from inmate prison accounts or payments from inmates’ associates or family, the news release said. Tran’s associates received a cut of the profits when they accepted money on his behalf.

Tran has been convicted on drug charges before. He had ownership interests in Martin’s Grocery on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard when federal agents seized about 30 pounds of marijuana and other paraphernalia, which sent him back to prison before he returned to Mississippi by 2016. He hatched the prison drug smuggling plan with two other prisoners while incarcerated, according to court records.

The Bureau of Prisons found the laced letters during mail scans designed to detect narcotics, court records said.

Others guilty in drug conspiracy

Another defendant, identified in court records as Ashley Magee, pleaded guilty to engaging in an unlicensed money transmission business by accepting and transferring money on Tran and inmates’ behalf. Magee will be sentenced in January and faces up to five years in prison.

Tran is one of several defendants already sentenced in the laced-mail conspiracy.

• Chaze Lowery pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and will spend four years in prison.

• William Hernandez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and will spend over seven years in prison.

• Jermaine Jones pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance and will spend over five years in prison.

• Eleven defendants pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit an offense against the United States by conspiring to introduce contraband to a federal correctional facility. Jorge Pena, Trae Short, Bobby Huneycutt, Clarence Plato, Ryan Douglas, Salomon Ayala, Stanley Spriggs, Corderius Trammell, Jonathan Estrada, Marcus Thames and Allen Butler got sentences ranging from time served to over four years in prison.

• Ryan Schmittaur pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance and will spend four years of probation and was fined $3,000.

Sun Herald staff writer Margaret Baker contributed reporting.