By Angeljean Chiaramida
CONCORD, N.H. — Seven Seabrook residents are among the 15 people indicted on Thursday on charges of operating a complex drug operation that smuggled addictive prescription drugs into the county jail.
Lynette Maryea, 30; Justin Knowles, 30; Kasie Randall, 18; Krystil Karlson, 26; Marcie Janvrin, 35; Arthur Wilson, 30; and Tameka Perkins, 28; all of Seabrook, along with Troy Muder, 37, and Richard Woods, 49, of Brentwood, N.H.; Noah Grassie of Exeter, N.H.; Jared Bowley, 21, of Nottingham, N.H.; Thomas Golliver, 20, of Raymond, N.H.; Michael Bartlett Merrill, 33, of Kingston, N.H.; Noreen Durham, 49, of Charlestown; and Kerry Noonan, 34, of Beverly, are facing charges of dealing prescription drugs in an operation in which pills were given to minimum-security inmates working at a county nursing home who then smuggled them into the nearby jail, the U.S. Attorney John Kacavas announced on Thursday.
Kacavas said the investigation began as a result of arrests on Sept. 20, when Rockingham County authorities stopped an attempt by one of the inmates to bring drugs into the county jail after he returned from work at the Rockingham County Nursing Home. The inmate was bringing in the pills oxycodone, Oxycontin, and other drugs, he said.
Both the jail and the nursing home are in Brentwood, N.H.
Kacavas said the 15 arrested are charged with possession and distribution of oxycodone and OxyContin, which are powerful painkillers; Suboxone, used to treat heroin addiction; and Lorazepam and Ativan, which are prescribed to lessen the effects of anxiety.
Kacavas said the Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies joined in when they found evidence that false prescriptions were created to get the drugs.
Matthew Addington, a Drug and Enforcement Administration agent in the New England division, said former inmates at the jail would go to hospitals and doctors' offices, get legitimate prescriptions for the pills, then cut the forms in half. They used a personal computer and created a template to produce false prescriptions on the paper.
"They produced numerous fraudulent prescriptions for controlled substances," Addington said. They got the pills from pharmacies and brought them in small quantities to the jail workers at the nursing home, who kept them hidden until they were returned to the jail at the end of the day, he said.
The operation didn't involve any nursing home or jail workers, Kacavas said. He said corrections officers conduct searches to make sure inmates have no contraband, "but you can't do that every time," he said.
Kacavas said the leader of the group was 37-year-old Troy Muder of Brentwood, a jail inmate who did not work at the nursing home. Kacavas said the corrections officers' investigation led to him. Some other inmates talked because inmates "were under pressure from Troy Muder to be involved in this, we think," he said. A member of the group on the outside, Lynette Maryea, 30, of Seabrook, was Muder's girlfriend, he said.
Some of the pills were distributed at the jail; others resold outside of the jail, Kacavas said.
If convicted of the charge, each person faces a maximum of 20 years in prison.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
