AUBURN — An Industry woman who told police she had smuggled heroin from Connecticut to Maine to resell pleaded guilty last week to two related crimes.
Lauren Leonard, 25, admitted to unlawful trafficking in scheduled drugs, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison; and to illegal importation of scheduled drugs, punishable by up to five years.
In a plea negotiation, Leonard will be sentenced to six years on the first charge and five years on the latter charge. On each of the two charges, she can only be sentenced to serve up to two years in prison; the rest of the time would be suspended by the judge. Leonard will serve the two sentences at the same time, not consecutively. Probation terms run three years on the first charge, two years on the second charge.
Sentencing was continued into the fall.
According to drug agents, Leonard was expected to drive a blue 2003 Volkswagen Jetta from Maine to Connecticut to pick up a supply of heroin at 1:30 p.m. on April 26, 2016, and return to Western Maine to sell the drugs.
Agents and law enforcement authorities awaited Leonard’s return by monitoring traffic on the Maine Turnpike, according to an affidavit in court files.
Maine State Police troopers noticed the car she was driving northbound on the turnpike at about 9:15 p.m. that day and followed her along the interstate highway. Troopers called ahead to drug agents who intercepted Leonard’s car at Exit 27 in Auburn at about 9:45 p.m.
Agents followed her to Route 4 westbound.
When she pulled her car into a Cumberland Farms store, officers surrounded it and ordered her out. Agents had secured a search warrant beforehand and, executing it, began their search.
“Leonard was nervous and shaking and quickly indicated her willingness to cooperate,” Maine Department of Drug Enforcement Special Agent Tony Milligan wrote in his affidavit in support of her arrest.
She handed Milligan a bundle of eight bags or doses of heroin from her bra and told him that an additional 18 bundles of 10 bags per bundle were inside the trunk of the car. Agents searched the trunk and found 180 bags of heroin, which they also seized.
She told agents that she and her boyfriend, Logan White, had intended to sell much of the heroin seized by agents after returning to Industry. She said she and White used roughly one bag of heroin daily or every two days and they would have sold the remainder for living expenses and to support their drug habit, Milligan wrote.
She identified drug contacts in Connecticut, what she paid and how much she and White still owed. She also told agents how many customers they supply in Western Maine. Leonard told agents how much they were owed by their customers.
The car she was driving was provided by a customer in exchange for forgiving a $90 heroin debt, she said.
White made the arrangements for the drug-trafficking business, Leonard told agents. He was on probation at the time for a felony conviction of criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated trafficking. He has since been sentenced to eight years in prison.
Leonard’s only criminal history had been a conviction on a misdemeanor for falsifying physical evidence and that was also drug related.
Assistant Attorney General Johanna Gauvreau told an Androscoggin County Superior Court justice last week that Leonard had admitted to snorting two “tickets” of heroin on the drive from Connecticut to Maine. She had paid $1,300 for the heroin supply and expected to have sold it for a $2,400 profit, Gauvreau said.
Leonard is free on bail pending sentencing. She must have no contact with White as a condition of her bail.
cwilliams@sunjournal.com
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