Tip to Westmoreland prison staff results in drug smuggling charge for inmate

County detectives arrested Westmoreland County Prison inmate suspected of smuggling Suboxone into the Hempfield lockup after someone dropped an anonymous tip in a suggestion box.

Jamie Rayques Espy, 33, is charged with three felony counts of manufacturing, delivery and possession of a controlled substance, conspiracy to smuggle a controlled substance into a public facility and related charges.

More charges are expected to be filed against at least two others suspected of being involved in the smuggling, Detective James Williams confirmed.

An anonymous informant left a suggestion slip for prison staff in February directing them to investigate Espy and other inmates, according to court papers.

“There is a lot of Suboxone coming in every week … there’s 2 people working together…,” the note stated.

The tip also suggested that Espy would regularly smuggle the contraband into the prison after he would go to medical appointments at Excela Health Latrobe hospital. The contraband was being left in a bathroom at the hospital by the girlfriend of a second inmate suspected in the smuggling, the tipster wrote.

Williams said prison security staff listened to inmate phone calls and learned a second inmate would call his girlfriend “and directed her to take the contraband to the hospital and hide it in a certain bathroom where Espy was being treated.”

Espy would go to the restroom during his medical appointments, retrieve the drugs and “smuggle them back to the jail, where they would be sold to various inmates,” Williams said. Espy and the second inmate would use a cell phone cash delivery app “to have their friends or family members send the cash through a phone number given to them,” Williams added.

After the girlfriend received confirmation through the app that the money was delivered, she would contact her boyfriend and the Suboxone would be delivered to the inmates who purchased it, Williams wrote.

During the probe, Williams said that he learned that on at least two occasions the woman hid the contraband in the wrong bathroom.

Prison security and detectives used medical records and inmate phone calls to corroborate “the conspiracy involving the three of them,” Williams said. Prison staff found two orange rectangular films containing Suboxone wrapped in plastic hidden behind Espy’s bunk in a cell ‘“shakedown” Feb. 11.

Espy, of Southwest Greensburg, has been in the county jail since his Nov. 10 arrest for unlawful possession of a firearm, carrying an unlicensed gun and multiple drug-related charges. His trial is scheduled in July.