A former Georgia prison guard who once smuggled methamphetamine and cellphones to inmates behind bars is now facing a new set of federal drug and weapons charges after deputies found him asleep in his car with meth, heroin and two loaded handguns. Mark Edward Jeffery, 41, of Calhoun, was indicted by a federal grand jury on September 8 on charges of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.
According to the Department of Justice, the case stems from a February 11, 2025 encounter in Gordon County, where a sheriff's deputy found Jeffery asleep inside a vehicle. A search of the car turned up bags of methamphetamine, heroin, a bag of colored pills in Jeffery's pocket, a digital scale, empty packaging bags, and two loaded handguns, as first reported by FOX 5 Atlanta. The investigation involved the Gordon County Sheriff's Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The Department of Justice announced the federal prosecution. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Herskowitz and Edward C. Robinson Jr. are the lead prosecutors on the case. FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent Mitchell Jackson said that Jeffery allegedly resumed drug peddling immediately upon his release from federal prison, according to the agency's announcement.
A Guard Turned Smuggler, Then Convict
Jeffery's path to this indictment began years earlier inside Hays State Prison in Trion, Georgia, where he worked as a state corrections officer. During a February 7, 2018 incident at the prison, a fellow corrections officer alerted supervisors after noticing a large rectangular package wrapped in black electrical tape hidden inside Jeffery's beverage container, per the Department of Justice. A subsequent search of his person and belongings revealed methamphetamine, two bags containing 190 pills, four smartphones, four charger cables, a water bottle filled with alcohol, and a glass smoking pipe, as detailed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Jeffery pleaded guilty to federal drug trafficking in April 2019 and was sentenced to five years in federal prison, according to the Department of Justice. Jeffery worked at Hays State Prison before he was caught. The facility, which opened in 1990, houses approximately 1,680 male inmates as a high-security state correctional institution.
Part of a Broader Pattern Inside Georgia Prisons
Jeffery's case is not an isolated one. In a similar 2018 case at the same prison, former GDC officer Tiffany Cook was sentenced in December 2018 to seven years and eight months in federal prison after an inmate tip led guards to intercept her with 118 grams of meth and 150 grams of marijuana, according to Corrections1. The Jeffery and Cook cases both involved prison staff introducing contraband at Hays State Prison.
The problem has persisted well beyond that period. Between 2018 and 2023, at least 428 Georgia Department of Corrections employees were arrested for on-the-job criminal conduct, according to an analysis by GPS Intelligence. The pattern underscores the persistent contraband and staffing pressures facing rural, high-security facilities like Hays State Prison.
Facing a Mandatory Minimum Sentence
Jeffery now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison if convicted on the new federal charges. Officials have not confirmed a trial date for the charges outlined in the grand jury indictment. The information in the case was gathered from U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg and the FBI's Cartersville Resident Agency, with seized items credited to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
