Janice Morse reports:
A Cincinnati man has been sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in a drug-trafficking organization that supplied marijuana to students in two Warren County school districts, the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office said in a news release today.
“Allen Honeycutt and his co-conspirators made hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars trafficking drugs to our young people. It is particularly satisfying to see him have to answer for his despicable actions,” said Prosecutor David Fornshell in a news release.
Allen Honeycutt. Photo: Warren County Jail
A Warren County jury on Thursday convicted Honeycutt, 59, on charges of trafficking, possession of marijuana, cultivation of marijuana, possession of criminal tools, and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity. Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Peeler sentenced him to serve a mandatory eight years in prison and pay fines totaling $17,500. Honeycutt must also serve five years on probation after he gets out of prison.
Honeycutt was the last suspect facing charges among seven adults and a Mason High School teen, Tyler Pagenstecher, in an organization that was supplying marijuana to students in the Mason and Kings school districts, Fornshell said.
The case against Honeycutt has been ongoing since a year ago, when a Warren County grand jury returned a five-count indictment against him.
In an investigation of the drug ring, investigators had found three indoor growing operations that produced high-grade marijuana that the organization sold throughout southwest Ohio, Fornshell said.
Officers seized 600 marijuana plants, more than $100,000 in cash, and several hundred grams of harvested marijuana. The marijuana was worth an estimated $2.9 million. Investigators traced the network to Pagenstecher, who is serving at least six months in a state juvenile facility for trafficking in drugs.
Fornshell called Pagenstecher “the primary source for marijuana for students in the Mason school district, and a significant source of marijuana for students in the Kings school district.”
