Police arrested the leaders of a massive heroin distribution ring that earned nearly $1 million annually and is linked to five overdoses in Pennsylvania.
Authorities have made 11 arrests and charged a total of 13 people in the scheme. Sheamus Patrick McCarthy, 27, and Casey James McCarthy, 22, brothers from Quakertown, are the leaders of the operation, which police say pulled in nearly $1 million each year at its peak. The pair operated out of their parents home in a remote, wooded section of Richland Township, reports Philly Voice.
The heroin distribution ring is implicated in at least five overdoses, two of which proved fatal. Police say the brothers sold an average of 200 to 400 bundles of heroin a week, each containing 10 to 14 bags.
“This ring was booming,” Bucks County District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub told Philly Voice. “Daniel Killion did not survive his bout with heroin, nor did Sean Brzyski. They both ingested heroin that could be loosely traced to this heroin organization and they died.”
The alleged supplier of the operation, Antoine Hakim Harris, and alleged distributor Ryan Ernest Mokrynchuk, are still alluding police capture. One of the defendants arrested, 25-year-old Thomas James McCarthy, is the brother of Sheamus and Casey, and also operated an independent drug distribution ring in upper Bucks County and Allentown in Lehigh County.
Each defendant is charged with running or participating in a corrupt organization, while facing multiple individual drug related felony charges.
Police are making recent headway against major trafficking operations feeding addiction in the U.S. A two-year investigation by officials in Pennsylvania dubbed “Operation Crushed Ice” recently ended in 49 arrests. The drug ring extended across the U.S. from the Delaware Valley to Arizona and even Puerto Rico.
Police seized undisclosed amounts of methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, marijuana and prescription narcotics during a number of raids conducted in January.
Authorities in Illinois made sweeping drug arrests March 9, charging 65 people for distributing heroin, fentanyl and cocaine in the West Side of Chicago. Over the course of the investigation, known as “Operation Sweet Dreams,” authorities seized more than a dozen firearms, more than three kilograms of heroin, three kilograms of cocaine and more than $380,000 in cash.
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