A New Castle man who was among a large group arrested in a 2024 federal drug investigation has been sentenced to more than six years in prison for his part in a drug ring connecting Detroit and Western Pennsylvania.
Jauan Searcy, 44, was one of 19 suspects — 10 of them from New Castle — charged with conspiring to distribute fentanyl, crack cocaine, heroin and oxycodone from August 2023 through August 2024.
He pleaded guilty last year.
Searcy and others supplied street dealers “throughout and beyond Western Pennsylvania,” with some working at “trap houses” in New Castle, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Western Pennsylvania. Prosecutors define a trap house as a drug processing and drug distribution hub.
A number of them regularly shuttled between Pennsylvania and Michigan as part of the operation.
Investigators used confidential sources and informants, extensive surveillance and analysis of phone records, controlled drug buys, search warrants, and eventually court-authorized wiretaps to gather evidence.
Police conducting a traffic stop caught one of the ring’s alleged leaders — Christian Frierson, 33, of Detroit — while he was traveling in Nebraska, en route to California, prosecutors said.
They found a safe filled with more than 1,000 grams of fentanyl and nearly 250 grams of heroin, according to court paperwork.
Several of the suspects, including Searcy, had criminal records, some stretching back three decades, including previous drug-trafficking and firearms convictions, federal prosecutors said.
When Searcy was taken into custody in New Castle in August 2024, agents found a shotgun next to his bed, resulting in an additional charge of gun possession by a convicted felon.
Searcy was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison, followed by six years of supervised release.
The investigation involved the FBI, DEA, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office and numerous local, regional and state police, along with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.