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Phoenix man gets prison for shipping drugs to federal inmates in books

Posted 1/13/25

A Phoenix man was sentenced in January to more than four years in prison and five years of supervised release for providing contraband to federal inmates via a scheme that involved putting drugs in …

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Legal

Phoenix man gets prison for shipping drugs to federal inmates in books

Posted

A Phoenix man was sentenced in January to more than four years in prison and five years of supervised release for providing contraband to federal inmates via a scheme that involved putting drugs in books.

Julius Darnell Dixon, 54, was sentenced last week by U.S. District Judge Steven P. Logan to 51 months in prison, followed by 60 months of supervised release, for the contraband change and for a supervised release violation, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Officials said Dixon conspired with others to ship books from bookstores in the Phoenix area that contained hidden Suboxone strips between February 2023 and April 2024. The scheme worked to make it look like the inmates bought the books, according to the press release.

Investigators found Dixon’s connection to the group by discovering communication between him and the inmates after two mailings were found by prison staff. The packages were traced to bookstores in the Phoenix area, where Dixon had given his phone number and, for one mailing, his name and email address, according to the press release.

The guilty plea constituted a violation of Dixon’s supervised release for an earlier bank robbery conviction, officials said in the release.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, with the assistance of the Bureau of Prisons, conducted the investigation in this case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick E. Chapman, District of Arizona, Phoenix, handled the prosecution.

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