By Alayna DeMartini
The Columbus Dispatch
LICKING COUNTY, Ohio — Inside the drywall of a Licking County home, federal investigators pulled out $3.2 million in cash. From a trailer parked in the driveway, they carried out 2,100 pounds of marijuana.
Donald Dailey was living in the Pataskala house until Tuesday, when he was arrested in what federal officials say is central Ohio’s largest drug bust in recent memory.
In all, the probe, involving agents of the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration and Columbus police, has netted $4.2 million in cash and $2.5 million worth of marijuana compressed into bricks.
The amount of cash and drugs collected from Dailey’s home, at 6397 Watkins Rd., is unusual. Dealers typically don’t have that much in one spot because they distribute drugs soon after getting them, said Columbus police detective Pat Ellis.
“Two thousand one hundred pounds of marijuana, that’s significant. They’re not going to sit on that,” Ellis said.
Federal investigators also raided a second house in Pataskala: the 211 King Ave. home of Dailey’s brother, Tim. There, they found $100,000 in the walls and a pound of pot.
The Dailey brothers — Donald is 39 and Tim is 38 — are the leaders of the marijuana ring, police said. Each is charged with one federal count of conspiring to distribute marijuana.
So are two Texas men: Marvin Jackson, 66, and William Stevenson, 65.
On March 14, Jackson and Stevenson drove from Texas in an RV to Licking County, authorities say. After the two men left Donald Dailey’s home, police and federal investigators confronted them. Police said they pulled $800,000 from a compartment of the RV.
Police confiscated 82 guns from the Dailey brothers’ homes. All but seven were in Donald’s house, they said.
“They were all over the house,” said David DeVillers, an assistant U.S. attorney.
He will present the case to a federal grand jury for possible indictments stemming from the long investigation.
“We’ve been chasing money for a while,” DeVillers said.
Stevenson and the two Dailey brothers remain in the Franklin County jail with no bail set for their release. Jackson was released last week.
Copyright 2008 The columbus Dispatch