VA. SHERIFF AND 19 OTHERS CHARGED IN DRUG SCHEME

Federal investigators began to suspect that the Sheriff's Department
in Henry County, Va., was involved in illegal drug trafficking in
2005, when drug enforcement officials in Philadelphia intercepted a
mail package containing the illicit date rape drug Ketamine to a house
owned by a sergeant with the department.

The package was mailed to William Randall Reed, a private citizen who
told federal investigators that he had been the middleman in a scheme
to buy and sell drugs with the help of members of the Henry County
Sheriff's Department and others.

Today, after an investigation lasting more than a year, the United
States Attorney in Roanoke, Va., John L. Brownlee, announced that his
office has charged 20 people, including H. Franklin Cassell, the Henry
County sheriff, in a scheme to sell drugs and other items seized from
drug offenders back to the community.

Among the 20 charged are 13 current and former officers in the
Dheriff's Department, including a former United States Postal Service
employee and a state probation officer.

Mr. Brownlee said at a news conference today that the scheme involved
officers and former officers working with drug dealers to distribute
and sell Ketamine, cocaine, marijuana and steroids. The members of the
department worked with a drug ring to take a variety of items seized
from criminals, including not only controlled substances, but also
firearms, cash, automotive equipment and even lawnmowers, the
indictment said.

"You have law enforcement risking their lives to take these guns off
the street and putting them right back out there," Mr. Brownlee said.
"It is disgraceful corruption that they would take narcotics seized
from the community and then members of law enforcement would put them
right back out there."

The 48-count indictment against the 23 includes racketeering
conspiracy, weapons charges, narcotics distribution, obstruction of
justice and perjury.

Investigators said Mr. Cassell, who had been the sheriff since 1992,
told his officers to lie to investigators, and either ignored or
encouraged illegal activities among his staff.

Mr. Cassell was quoted by investigators as saying that the only way to
acquire wealth is to be "a little crooked and not get caught," The
Associated Press reported.

Mr. Cassell headed a department of 96 officers in a county with a
population of about 58,000 located near the North Carolina border. The
area's tobacco industry was replaced years ago by textile and
furniture manufacturing, but unemployment has climbed into the double
digits in the last few years.

State police and other county officials are helping to run the
sheriff's office in the wake of the arrests, officials said.

The investigation found that since 1998, "sworn officers, employees,
and associates of the Henry County Sheriff's Office engaged in a
continuous scheme to steal narcotics, firearms and other contraband
from the seized evidence property room," a statement by Mr. Brownlee's
office said. "The defendants took cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana,
and firearms, and then sold the stolen drugs and guns back into the
community."

The indictment said that when the sheriff was told that his officers
might be involved in illegal drug trade, he "chose not to take any
action."

Instead, Mr. Cassell "covered up these illegal activities by failing
to pursue investigation, by agreeing to disclose sensitive law
enforcement information to the offending parties in order for them to
avoid detection and arrest," according to the indictment.

James Alden Vaught, the sergeant who agreed to cooperate with
investigators, told investigators that he was paid off by a drug ring
that included Mr. Reed to use his house in Martinsville, Va., to
distribute illicit narcotics.

The indictment also said Mr. Cassell tried to help Mr. Vaught in a
money-laundering scheme "to disguise the source of monies represented
to have been derived form the distribution of cocaine."