LEWISTON — A convicted Twin Cities drug trafficker pleaded guilty Friday to selling cocaine and heroin.

Nicholas N. Rolling, 24, of 121 Spring St., Auburn admitted in 8th District Court to two charges of unlawful trafficking of scheduled drugs. He was sentenced to three years in prison on each count, to be served at the same time.

He was ordered to pay a $400 fine plus reimburse the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency $180.

He had faced up to 10 years in prison on each of the felony drug charges.

According to a drug agent’s affidavit, Rolling was a known drug trafficker in the Lewiston and Auburn area and Augusta. He pleaded guilty in April to charges after selling drugs to undercover agents and received six-month sentences for each, Special Agent Nicholas Gagnon wrote in his July affidavit.

Rolling was on probation in July for a felony conviction of criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon. One of the conditions of his probation allowed law enforcement to search him and his home without a warrant.

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Gagnon had gotten word that Rolling had been selling heroin from his third-floor room at a boarding house, Gagnon wrote. He met with Rolling outside the building and went to his room with him. Gagnon searched the room and found a sandwich bag with a corner torn free, a common method of packaging drugs.

As Gagnon was leaving Rolling’s room, he noticed an adjacent room without a door that was apparently used to store old furniture. As Gagnon approached that room, Rolling “seemed to become increasingly nervous,” Gagnon wrote. Rolling sought to downplay the significance of the room, Gagnon wrote, telling him, “There’s nothing in there.”

Gagnon located a digital scale on a box spring that was leaning against a wall and asked Rolling, “What’s this?”

Rolling fled his room and the building, wrote Gagnon, who continued his search.

At the bottom of the box spring, he pulled away material to reveal what appeared to be illegal drugs, which were analyzed and tested positive as roughly 56 grams of cocaine and 28 grams of heroin.

Meanwhile, Rolling had gotten a ride to a Chinese buffet in Lewiston, where police tracked him down.

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During police questioning, Rolling denied any knowledge of the drugs found in the box spring and refused to provide passwords to his iPhone. Gagnon wrote that he was able to figure out Rolling’s phone passcode and secured it to prevent the possible remote erasing of content.

After getting a warrant to search Rolling’s phone, Gagnon found text messages from a contact named “Katie” corresponding with Rolling about “bags” of heroin. Texts with a contact with a New York area code revealed Rolling saying, “the feds is at my house” and that he has “mad food in my other room.”

Gagnon wrote that “food” is slang among drug dealers for illegal drugs.

“It’s clear that he knew he was caught and that’s why he left (his building) in a hurry,” Gagnon wrote in his affidavit.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com


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