Authorities bust drug ring

Published 9:21 am Thursday, May 28, 2015

MINNEAPOLIS — Forty-one people are facing federal charges in an alleged drug trafficking conspiracy that distributed drugs across the Upper Midwest and on two large Minnesota Indian reservations.

U.S. attorney Andrew Luger will announce Thursday what he calls the “takedown” of a multistate organization that transported illicit drugs largely out of Detroit and Chicago and sold them to Indian communities in Minnesota and elsewhere.

The indictment said 37-year-old Omar Sharif Beasley allegedly recruited sources, supervisors, distributors and couriers from Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis to aid in the drugs’ distribution.

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The indictment also said defendants transported heroin, methamphetamine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone and other drugs to the Red Lake and White Earth Indian reservations in northwestern Minnesota.

At least 10 people have been arrested.