6/15/11 Charges filed in psilocybin mushroom sting

  • By Nick Sabo
  • June 15, 2011
  • 251
                        
SUMMARY: Charges include trafficking, illegal cultivation Additional charges were brought Wednesday June 15 against suspects rounded up in a hallucinatory mushroom investigation. According to the Wayne County Clerk of Courts courtview website, the following individuals are charged in felony indictments: Justion R. Graham, 27, 140 N. Main St., Creston, with four counts of trafficking in drugs and one count of illegal manufacture or cultivation of drugs; Brian K. Brown, 44, 7040 Cleveland Road, Wooster, with seven counts of trafficking in drugs, two counts of trafficking in counterfeit controlled substances and seven counts of illegal manufacture or cultivation of drugs; Bert D. Underwood, 58, 692 Greenwood Boulevard, Wooster, with five counts of trafficking in drugs and three counts of illegal manufacture or illegal cultivation of drugs. No information was posted regarding codefendants Shannon M. Yeagley, 29, 3669 E. Sterling Road, Creston, and Ilene M. Bennett, 67, both of 7040 Cleveland Road, Wooster, as of 4:30 p.m. when the courts close. Yeagley was originally arrested on one count of trafficking in crack cocaine. Bennett was arrested on one count of cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms. The most serious charges against Underwood and Brown carry up to eight years in prison. Graham faces up to 18 months on the most serious charge. Court staff referred inquiries to the website. Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Lutz was unavailable for comment. The five codefendants were arrested in a June 6 raid after a six month investigation by Medway Drug Enforcement Agency. According to Medway senior agent Don Hall, Brown allegedly taught the others how to grow the mushrooms from spores purchased legally through the Internet. The codefendants were selling the psilocybin mushrooms to a small number of local customers, Hall said, and shipping the rest out to other markets. Brown and Bennett are mother and son. Underwood was allegedly cultivating the psilocybin mushrooms at home, and selling them from his jewelry store 2991 Cleveland Road, Wooster. Search warrants at the codendants’ residences and other locations turned up 57 trays of growing mushrooms and 110 glass jars with spores in the incubation period. Dried psilocybin mushrooms and “30 to 40” firearms were also recovered in the raid, Hall said. The spores and growing trays represented an estimated potential yield of $150,000 in product.


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