By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
An off-duty sheriff’s deputy, a Glasgow police officer, a flock of cameras, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Skittles combined to uncover multiple drug thefts from Ritchie Pharmacal.
Sarah D’Auria, 27, pleaded guilty on March 13 to one count of “conspiracy to commit theft of medical products” and “conspiracy to distribute controlled substance,” and could face a maximum prison sentence of 16 years, a fine of $350,000 and 3 years of supervised release. Her sentencing is scheduled for June 9. She is one of the three Californians charged in a conspiracy to steal narcotics from Ritchie Pharmacal in Glasgow whose cases are in Western District of Kentucky Federal Court.
Her compatriots in the case, Robert Newman and Isaac Newman, have not had their cases settled. All were indicted in November.
The saga began in July 2024 when the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Louisville Office was notified of 10 shipments destined for the Glasgow distributor of pharmaceuticals were rerouted to a Dollar General in Bowling Green, according to an affidavit from a DEA officer.
After conferring with FedEx, the Louisville Office had the New York distributor send a “controlled shipment” containing only one bottle of Oxycodone, 99 bottles of Skittles and two embedded trackers on July 30, 2024 in the hopes that the shipment would also be redirected and picked up at the Bowling Green Dollar General. The store was under surveillance by the DEA. The potential sting operation proved unsuccessful and the shipment was not rerouted.
On Aug. 22, 2024, another drug officer reported that two Ritchie Pharmacal-bound shipments had been rerouted the day before, this time to a Scottsville Dollar General where an “unknown black male pulling a wagon…had claimed the boxes.” Three other drug shipments were being held at a FedEx facility in Nashville that were addressed to Ritchie Pharmacal and had also been rerouted to the same Scottsville Dollar General.
Investigators transported the three shipments to the Scottsville store and established surveillance there for two days, which yielded no results. An enterprising employee had been told of the thefts, took the shipments in “a back room,” and instructed others to release them only to FedEx or verifiable Ritchie employees.
Drug officers were told by the Allen County Sheriff’s Office on Aug. 29 that an “unknown black male” had gone to the Scottsville store asking for the three shipments. The unknown male was turned away.
An off-duty Allen County sheriff’s deputy getting fuel at a nearby gas station “smelled the strong odor of marijuana” coming from a vehicle parked at a gas pump. The two men who claimed the car resembled the two men who had attempted to retrieve the drug shipments at the Dollar General in Scottsville. They were also believed to be the same two men who did pick up the shipments in Bowling Green. There were no drugs found in the vehicle when it was searched at the gas station.
The men with the car were Curtis David Michael Shaw and Duvell Felton. Neither was arrested that day, but the system of traffic cameras that police call “FLOCK” was used to track their car to Chicago, according to the affidavit. Both had been arrested five days earlier in Burbank, Calf. on charges of possession of a controlled substance for sale and possession of heroin/cocaine, according to Burbank Police Department records online.
Another Ritchie shipment intercepted
Nearly two months later, another shipment bound for Ritchie Pharmacal was intercepted in a more direct way.
On Oct. 14, Glasgow police officers responded to Ritchie Pharmacal that reported a theft of a controlled substance shipment of promethazine with codeine that never arrived. The FedEx delivery driver stated a man inside a “black passenger car” claimed “the loading dock was down” and thus the shipment needed to be loaded on to a white pickup truck that was parked in the roadway near Ritchie’s parking lot, according to the affidavit.
Glasgow Police Detective Andrew Moore checked the “FLOCK camera system” and found the white pickup truck, which was rented by Sarah D’Auria from PV Holding Corp., the affidavit states, and the “black passenger car” was determined to be rented by Robert Newman. Tracking both vehicles with the cameras, “investigators were able to see that the vehicles ultimately traveled to Minnesota on Oct. 14, 2024.” From there, the vehicles were suspected to be going to California.
Washington City, Utah, police officer Nolan Tanner, who was also a full-time Homeland Security Investigations Task Force Officer, was informed of the shipment theft “involv[ing] vehicles destined for California.” On Oct. 17, Tanner saw the white pickup truck pass him on Interstate 15 and pulled it over. D’Auria and Isaac Newman — the third person indicted in the federal case — were in the vehicle along with numerous “large cardboard boxes” containing 184 bottles of promethazine hydrochloride and codeine phosphate worth around $644,000 in “street value.”
Tanner found “two large bundles” of cash, which he estimated to be between $30,000 to 40,000 inside a backpack held by Isaac Newman. Tanner placed both Isaac Newman and D’Auria under arrest.
On the same day, Robert Newman dropped off the “black BMW” in Vail, Colorado, and rented a “white BMW” with a Colorado license plate. The white BMW had a GPS that “could report his location at any time,” according to a different criminal complaint filed with the court. The next day, Glasgow police detective Moore coordinated with the Colorado State Police and the DEA “to try and intercept Newman and the vehicle which was reporting its location … in Garfield County, Colorado.”
The car was located at the Blair Ranch Rest Area and DEA agents established surveillance on the vehicle before eventually making contact with Robert Newman, who matched the FedEx driver’s description of the man who told him the loading dock was down. With hands shaking, and complaining of “his back hurting,” Robert Newman was arrested and patted down.
Investigators then searched the BMW and found numerous pharmacy bottles of hydrocodone, shotgun shells, and numerous other items that appeared to be stolen, such as trail cameras and backpacks/bags, according to the complaint. One of the bottles bore National Drug Code numbers that was consistent with a NDC number reported missing by SPECGX LLC, which was bound for Ritchie Pharmacal and was rerouted to the Dollar General in Bowling Green.
D’Auria’s sentencing is scheduled for June 9 in Bowling Green, according to the federal court docket. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Ansari wrote they will “recommend a sentence of imprisonment at the lowest end of the applicable guideline range,” stipulate restitution of $4,500 to RXCrossroads 3PL and demand forfeiture of the $20,702 seized, her plea agreement states.
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