Читать книгу Guilty Til' Proven Innocent - Roger W Upchurch - Страница 3

They can lie to you but you better not lie to them.

The next day we got up fixed our coffee, Peggy got ready for work and went to work as usual, but not as rich! I called Gary an attorney friend of mine and told him what happened; he was sick that they did that, and it happened to me. He is a real estate and entertainment attorney and he referred to a criminal attorney he knows and his name is Richard Keefer with the law firm of Greenbaum, Doll LLC. I called Mr. Keefer and told him some of what happened, and we set up an appointment for the next day at 2 pm. I called Gary back, and we decided to meet at Daddy Jacks for lunch at 1 pm and I called my accountant as well and told him and he met us there too. Over lunch, I told them everything that happened and how corrupt the DOJ can be. I told Kirk, my accountant, to shut down Real Feel Products Inc, which was the name of the corporation we were using.

The next morning Peggy and I went to the bank and pulled that $30,000 out of the bank with a cashier’s check made out to the attorneys for a retainer. At 2 pm I went to the attorney’s office, and it was just off the circle in downtown Indianapolis and their office is on the 27th and 28th floors must be doing well to have such lavish Offices. I walked up to the receptionist which was a very nice lady and I told her my name and said that I was here to see Mr. Keefer, she said have a seat and I will let him know you are here. I sat down at a couch just in front of a wall of glass overlooking the skyline of the city and could see the building where Shelby and Ryan got married.

About five minutes later Mr. Keefer walked to me with another gentleman. I shook hands with Mr. Keefer and introduced myself and he said I am Richard Keefer, and this is Mike Gaerte. Mr. Keefer said lets meet in here and let us see if we can help you Keefer said. I started telling my story from the beginning when I started manufacturing the product. And thru to Lewis buying a product off me and then raiding me on February 12th. I told them as I told Lewis that I had never heard of the product that they said I had in my products which were XRLII.

Mr. Keefer said that this is a gray area and the Feds are unclear on how to handle these cases, so they try to get you by scare tactics to get you to a plea deal. Mr. Keefer said if you go to a supermarket and buy a bag of flour and when you open it and it is cocaine are you guilty of possession? I do not think so. I believe we can help you, but I am not sure that a trial would be the best thing, we can push for probation.

I said what about the money and assets that they took including about $50,000 that Peggy had in her retirement account years before I got into this business. Keefer said they would see what they could do about that. Mike here will be your guy that you will work with him as he is billed out at $300 an hour, I am $500 an hour. I knew it would be expensive and that probably the going rate for criminal attorneys, so I handed the cashier’s check for $30,000 and agreed to hire them. They said OK and that they will contact Lewis with the DEA and find out who the prosecutor will be and then set up another meeting soon. I said OK and then left. Two days later Mike called me and told me that he talked to Lewis and they had conversations that were recorded by Lewis as he was wearing a wire when meeting me and they wanted me to listen to it. Mike called me a few hours later and said that we can go the next morning to listen to the tapes. He also said that a Mr. Sardelli was our Prosecutor, and he was working out of Washington DC.

The next morning, I met Mike at the DEA’s office which was a sizeable building and was the social security building as well. We get to their office and Lewis came out and handed Mike a recording and we listened to it. I did not hear any real damaging comments or nothing positive either. I wish I would have said something as I would never do anything illegal, but I did not. The next day Mike called, and he talked to Mr. Sardelli and said that he seemed like a likable guy and wanted to make a plea deal and wanted to meet soon. They would be in contact with me to schedule a day and time.

Mike and I met for lunch the next day downtown then went to his office for more discussions. I told him that in the middle of August 2013 a customer of mine Gary that lived in Fishers Indiana was buying products off of us and did not want to go thru Andrew in L.A. He said that he only wanted to deal with me. He brought Lewis to meet me and buy some products. I knew that I should have not trusted Gary and Lewis and I should have been smarter. He said he was a buyer and his family-owned stores in Indiana and Kentucky and wanted to sell our products. Which was all lies. He also said he was interested in buying me out, which was another lie. Lewis bought a small amount with cash. He said that he would get back to me about more products and buying me out.

"The government can lie to you, but you better not lie to them"

I am not sure what kind of deal Gary made with the DEA but no doubt it benefited him. He was a snitch or a “Whistle Blower” and I have not seen or heard from Gary again and the next time I saw Lewis was that February morning in 2014

We were always careful of what we bought and having our products tested randomly to make sure we were not selling banned products. I knew that I may be borderline but technically I was not buying anything banned so it was not illegal, technically. They said that I had a chemical called XRL11 and that was banned in March 2013.

Our powder came from China and one company that I worked with had a salesgirl and I called her Gorgeous. I had a good relationship with her, and she kept me in products. All the powder looks the same so without lab testing, you just to have to take their word for it. I trusted Gorgeous.

Andrew has bought chemicals from other companies but always was careful getting them tested as well he tells me. He could have got the banned products by mistake or greed got to him to get products out the door, I do not know. That got me thinking because one day Lewis called me and asked me if I paid a lab company extra money to state that the products were not banned, but actually were, I said absolutely not but could have Andrew; I do not know, but I do know he was cheating me and getting money under the table. I sort of turned a blind eye as I was making almost $100,000 a week and doing almost nothing.

I remember that we had a lot of products that became banned, and we decided to burn it instead of selling it. We burned about $50,000 worth of banned products. If you stood too close to the fire, you would get high.

As, for the DEA I never saw their test to substantiate their claim of our products of having any banned products. For all, I know they could have planted something in the products or just lied to me. They had done plenty of other lies. Here is an article about me and some others were in the Indianapolis Star. I knew Doug Sloan, and he was the one who introduced me to K2. I think I met Parsons once and was not in business with him, and there are others that have been stated that were part of the business that I never met or heard of. I was never interviewed by any reporter from any station. Why? You would think they would want the facts.

Here is an article in the Indianapolis Star

In 2010, court records say, Upchurch began manufacturing “smokeless synthetic cannabis products” in Indiana. He sold more than 2,000 pounds of spice, and “profited millions of dollars,” according to sentencing documents.

Roger Upchurch awaits sentencing after agreeing to plead guilty to federal charges involving synthetic marijuana. Upchurch moved his manufacturing operation to Chandler, Arizona, in 2012. He moved it again the following year to Chatsworth, California, where the operation was producing more than 200 pounds of spice a day.

At a plea hearing in 2015, the judge asked Upchurch how he got involved with the spice ring. “A friend introduced me to a business opportunity that I took advantage of he said."

As part of his sentence, Upchurch forfeited more than $1.2 million along with a house, pontoon boat, and a 1966 Chevy, which the judge also asked him about. I graduated in 66, and that was the first car that I had, Upchurch explained. “So, I found one similar to it.”

As part of the plea deal negotiated in 2015, Upchurch agreed to help investigators in exchange for a lighter sentencing recommendation than the 20 years he was facing. Court records indicate his assistance included testifying before a federal grand jury in New York.

It is not clear from public records if Upchurch provided testimony against Sloan, Parsons, or Jaynes, who prosecutors allege sold more than 555,000 packages of spice between April 2011 and October 2013. Over a period of nine months in 2013, Jaynes grossed at least $2.6 million in sales, according to testimony. His total income from the drug sales, prosecutors said, was higher but could not be quantified easily.

Jaynes started in the business by packaging synthetic drugs made in Missouri by Doug and Greg Sloan, and eventually moved into distributing the finished product to retail outlets. When authorities shut down the Sloans' operation, Jaynes began making spice at a warehouse on Brookville Road and later at a Hancock County farm he purchased with $230,000 in cash.

Jaynes’ lawyer said he got involved with synthetic drugs after filing for bankruptcy and as his son was about to undergo open-heart surgery.

Contrary to what the article states I did not testify against anyone of the men listed above. One day Shelby and I had lunch together and said that she read this article and is was on TV about me and the others. She said that there was a guy that was a partner with Jarred Fogle and his child pornography deal. I told her that I do not know a lot of these people that the paper said that we are all part of a drug ring.

Here is another article.

IndyStar investigation: Indy's spice road

Probe uncovers tale of pastor, teacher and cops involved with synthetic drugs, bundles of cash and real trouble

Tim Evans, and Mark Alesia IndyStar

Robert Jaynes headed to his truck after a service Sunday, Oct. 25, 2015, at Irvington Bible Baptist Church. From all outward appearances, they were regular folks. Good Hoosiers. Salt-of-the-earth types in respected professions.

What they became, authorities say, was something much different — players in a real-life Indiana version of "Breaking Bad" involving millions of dollars in illegal drugs. But the drug was not meth. It was a potentially deadly synthetic substitute for marijuana.

The unlikely cast included a fire-and-brimstone preacher from a small Baptist church in Irvington. A husband and wife who were deputies for the Hendricks County Sheriff's Department. An Indianapolis Public Schools teacher. And a pair of business owners, one of whom put his company’s logo on an Indy 500 car and another who owned a natural dog food business, worked as a clown, and once ran for the state Senate as a Libertarian.

But behind their public personas, an Indianapolis Star investigation found, many appeared to be leading double lives. Court documents say those lives entangled them in an international criminal venture that made, packaged, and sold synthetic marijuana, commonly referred to as "spice" or "K2."

The local spice operation, according to court documents, was part of an international conspiracy stretching from the United States to China and back again to a farm near New Palestine and two warehouses along Brookville Road on the Southeast side of Indianapolis — a tangled web with branches that extended from New York to California.

But when The Star began pulling on the threads of that web, many led back to Indiana — and this most unlikely cast of suspects.

Irvington Bible Baptist Church in Indianapolis.

Robert Jaynes Jr., the fundamentalist preacher who founded Irvington Bible Baptist Church in 1998, is alleged to have been at the center of the Indiana operation that produced thousands of pounds of spice. The drug was sold — with a wink and nod, prosecutors say — as "incense" or "potpourri" and labeled "not for human consumption."

Jaynes, 45, employed church members in his drug enterprise. Records show members of the small congregation wrote personal checks to foreign suppliers of illegal substances used to make spice. Some laundered profits through personal bank accounts. Others produced and packaged the drugs at warehouses run by Jaynes and Kirk Parsons, 46, the pastor’s brother-in-law, close friend, and Irvington church leader. One even kept the books.

Through it all, Jaynes continued to preach the word of God, fervently imploring his parishioners to turn away from evil.

A YouTube video posted last year — just a week before Jaynes was indicted by a federal grand jury for his alleged role in the drug conspiracy — shows the pastor warning his flock about earthly temptations.

"When we come to Jesus Christ," Jaynes said, "we are no longer supposed to be partakers of the evil life. … The Bible tells us the devil is trying to deceive people and trick people and blind them and destroy them."

Luke Daugherty, who has known Jaynes since they were pastors more than a decade ago, called Jaynes a “spiritual predator.”

“He’s not some guy slinging spice on the side of the road,” Daugherty said. “He’s a guy who’s standing in a pulpit pontificating. He crashes down on people and makes them feel bad … and yet he’s running a multistate spice ring, and he’s dragging his own people into it.”

Jaynes now faces federal charges and is expected to plead guilty Nov. 20. He would not comment to The Star for this story, but in court records he has acknowledged his involvement and even offered to go to jail if his church members were spared prosecution.

Deadly drugs

The years-long saga involves several interconnected cases, including charges that Jaynes distributed controlled substances and misbranded synthetic drugs. His brother-in-law, Parsons, and two other Indiana suspects, Doug Sloan, and David Neal, face similar federal charges. Attorneys for Sloan and Neal declined comment on behalf of their clients. Parsons' attorney did not respond to multiple messages from The Star.

A separate but interconnected federal case has already been resolved. Roger Upchurch, of Indianapolis, agreed to plead guilty in March to conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance lookalike and money laundering. He admitted being "a leading member of (an) international drug trafficking organization," according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Upchurch's attorney declined to comment.

Spice first showed up in the U.S. about 10 years ago and quickly became popular because it was sold legally for a time and did not show up in most drug tests. It is made from dried plant material soaked in chemical compounds that mimic the effects of marijuana, and it is relatively easy and inexpensive to produce.

It has a widely varying impact on users. That is due to haphazard production by amateur "chemists," not to mention the dangerous side effects of the chemicals used. Synthetic marijuana was responsible for 15 deaths in the U.S. in the first half of 2015, triple the number for the same period last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Synthetic narcotics are not the harmless product traffickers and users make them out to be,” Josh Minkler, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said after Upchurch pleaded guilty. “They are mind-altering substances that cause psychosis and even death (among) our nation’s youth.”

Bibles and business, It is unclear how the operation began or what lured Jaynes and the others into the world of drugs and easy money.

What is known is that well before Jaynes was alleged to have entered the spice business, he had already established long-term connections with many of the people who court documents say had ties to the international drug ring.

In the 1990s, Jaynes was an ambitious preacher being mentored by another old-school fundamentalist Baptist pastor named Earl Chestnut. The men worked together at The Grace Church in Mooresville. It was at Grace that Jaynes grew closer to Parsons, who married his sister Sherry, now an IPS teacher. It was also during this time that Jaynes worked in the mortgage business with Sloan, as well as Chestnut's stepson, Russell Taylor.

Taylor is infamous for his connection to an unrelated high-profile case. The former head of Jared Fogle's foundation awaits sentencing in a child pornography case that also ensnared Fogle. (Subway Fame)