FARMINGTON — A Rumford man will serve more than seven years in prison for drug-related charges, including importing and selling heroin in 2016.

Logan D. C. White, 28, formerly of Industry, pleaded guilty to felony charges of illegal importation of scheduled drugs and unlawful trafficking in scheduled drugs on June 8 in Franklin County Superior Court. 

He also admitted to a probation violation related to a 2013 drug conviction involving hydrocodone and marijuana in Oxford County. The underlying sentence for a conviction on criminal conspiracy to traffic in illegal drugs was five years, all but 45 days suspended, followed by three years probation.  

White was arrested in April 2016 while on probation in that case after Maine Drug Enforcement Agency stopped 188 bags of heroin from Connecticut from reaching Franklin County.

A drug agent received a search warrant to stop a vehicle driven by White’s then-girlfriend, Lauren Leonard, who was 23, and listed with addresses in Peru and Industry, and to search it for evidence of heroin smuggling, importation and distribution.

State police helped MDEA track the heroin into Maine and spotted the car heading north on the Maine Turnpike. The drug agent followed the car from the Turnpike in Auburn to Center Street where Leonard pulled up to the gas pumps at a store.

Agents and police surrounded the vehicle, ordered Leonard to get out and told her they had a search warrant. Leonard handed the agent eight bags of dosage units of heroin that were in her bra and told him another 18 bundles of 10 bags each were in the trunk.

During a recorded interview, Leonard admitted to smuggling the heroin from Connecticut to Maine and that she and White were intending to sell much of the heroin upon returning to Industry. She also said she and White consume about one bag each of heroin every day or every other day and sell the rest to support their habit and living expenses, according to the MDEA affidavit.

Leonard also admitted the vehicle she was using was provided by someone in exchange for forgiving a $90 heroin debt, the affidavit states.

She told the agent it was White who arranged for the heroin trafficking business.

Leonard and White lived together at the time in Industry. Following the vehicle search, agents searched the couple’s residence. White had taken off in a vehicle moments before police arrived and it was later discovered that Leonard had sent a text message warning him she was being stopped by police, the affidavit states.

Agents also searched White’s place of employment in Farmington and discovered several Western Union money wire transaction records indicating several money wire transfers between White and the heroin supplier, according to the affidavit.

White was found hiding in a trailer in Wilton on April 27 and taken to the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office to be interviewed.

“White subsequently confessed to selling heroin and intended on selling the heroin” smuggled by Leonard, the agent wrote.

A Franklin County justice sentenced White to serve 29 months of an eight-year sentence on the unlawful trafficking in scheduled drugs charge. That sentence is to be served after White completes the nearly five years he was sentenced to in Oxford County in 2013. Following his release he will be on probation for three years.

White was sentenced to two years on the importation charge that will be served at the same time as the sentence for drug trafficking.

Leonard’s case is on the September jury list in Franklin County.

dperry@sunmediagroup.net