PARIS — A former Maine woman identified by officials as the “financial officer” in the largest drug investigation in Oxford County history has been sentenced to serve four years of a six-year prison sentence.
Briana Thayer, 29, of Bean Station, Tennessee, was sentenced in Oxford County Superior Court on Jan. 8, more than five years after the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency began an investigation into the importation and distribution of $3.2 million worth of heroin into Oxford County, according to the agency.
She and 14 others were arrested Dec. 22, 2015, on one charge each of conspiracy to commit aggravated trafficking in heroin, according to the MDEA.
Thayer pleaded guilty last month to aggravated trafficking in heroin, and the conspiracy charge was dropped. She was ordered to serve four years of probation and cannot possess firearms.
Between January 2013 and April 2015, the investigation uncovered 15 suspects police believed were responsible for importing and distributing 17.8 pounds of heroin throughout Oxford County. The amount of heroin was the equivalent of 80,000 doses and had a street value of $3.2 million, according to a statement from Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
MDEA Director Roy McKinney said in 2015 that information provided by a Maine State Police trooper from a motor vehicle stop prompted the investigation in November 2013.
According to officials, Del Hathaway of Saco, and Thayer, who was born and raised in Maine, were the main suppliers of heroin to Oxford County, and the two identified their supplier as Brian Aquino of Lynn, Massachusetts.
Hathaway was sentenced in March 2018 to serve 12 years of a 15-year sentence for aggravated heroin trafficking.
Assistant Attorney General David Fisher recommended that Thayer receive a lighter sentence than Hathaway, because she was not “actively involved in the distribution of heroin,” but that the sentence “not stray too far from the sentence imposed” on Hathaway.
“Ms. Thayer was Hathaway’s financial officer, responsible for collection of the large amount of funds generated by this enterprise,” Fisher wrote in the state’s sentencing memorandum. “Without her ability to balance the books and reinvest the proceeds, the organization would arguably have folded and much less heroin would have found its way into Oxford County.”
Briana Thayer
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