The kingpin of an Augusta-area drug conspiracy has been clapped in irons for nearly 13 years, marking the conclusion to a case that saw a total of 10 henchmen sentenced for their roles in trafficking meth and heroin. Justin Wayne Fields, 40, of Swainsboro, Ga., received 168 months behind bars and must also cough up a $2,500 fine before facing three years of supervised release, as per the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia. With the feds offering no parole, Fields is set for a long stretch in the big house.
Fields' operation linked with a Georgia state prison inmate to pump meth and heroin from Atlanta to Richmond and Emanuel Counties, orchestrating a drug superhighway straight through the community heart. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, this investigation unearthed a drug trade pipeline plying its poison from Mexico to Atlanta before hitting Augusta's streets. Fields and his co-conspirators, some behind bars themselves, used contraband cell phones to manage their murky dealings, leading law enforcement to raid dens of iniquity that yielded not just drugs, but firearms too.
All nine of Fields' associates, along with the seven defendants from a related conspiracy, pleaded guilty to federal charges. Sentences handed down to these criminal collaborators ranged up to a hefty 240 months. The ringleader of the second conspiracy, Jayson Dwayne Wheatley, 42, from Augusta, received the stiffest sentence of 240 months in prison. Meanwhile, Joshua Brooks Woodward, 30, also of Augusta and an inmate at the time, used contraband cell phones to play middleman from his cell block.
Law enforcement was blunt about the impact of these sentencings. “This sentence is a direct message to criminals that ATF will not allow egregious violations of our laws go unpunished,” Assistant Special Agent in Charge Beau Kolodka of the Atlanta ATF field office made it clear that traffickers of guns and drugs will find themselves squarely in the crosshairs of justice. The U.S. Attorney's Office echoed this sentiment, quoting Mr. Kolodka's words directly.
The case was a result of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) initiative, which wields a mightier sword by merging intelligence and resources across multiple agencies to cut down the highest-level criminal organizations threatening America. The lineup joining forces on Operation Wheat Fields included local departments, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, DEA, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, amongst others, all working in concert to orchestrate an end to these criminal acts.
