Cleveland drug trafficker still serving time had fentanyl pills mailed to him and eluded agents after car chase, feds say

CLEVELAND, Ohio — He hadn’t technically been released from prison, but federal agents said a Cleveland man figured out a way to have pills laced with fentanyl shipped to Ohio.

Rayshawn Ligon, 38, faces charges of attempted possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and escape. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Ligon, who has drug and other felony convictions stretching back to 1999, was living at Oriana House in Cleveland and serving the rest of a decade-long prison sentence when investigators watched him open a package he thought had drugs in it.

Authorities tried to pull him over in Euclid but Ligon abandoned his Jeep and ran away on March 1, according to an affidavit written by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Paul Stroney Jr. He managed to stay free for more than a month.

A grand jury issued charges against Ligon on Wednesday. A phone call left for his attorney was not immediately returned.

Records show Ligon was about 14 months away from release when he racked up the new charges. The Federal Bureau of Prisons routinely moves inmates to halfway houses when they near the end of their sentences.

Exactly when Ligon arrived at Oriana House and whether he had the ability to leave the facility was not immediately known. The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The prisons bureau’s website shows that Ligon’s expected release date was June 30, 2020.

Stroney wrote that U.S. Postal Inspection Service Inspector Myrick Dennis flagged a package headed for a house on East 78th Street in the city’s St. Clair-Superior Neighborhood in February. The package was mailed from Modesto, California, to a “Betty Michaels,” even though there were no records of that person being associated with the address, Stroney wrote.

Dennis opened the package on Feb. 28 after obtaining a search warrant. Inside were nearly three-quarters of a pound worth of blue pills containing fentanyl, according to the affidavit.

The next day, authorities delivered the package 11:12 a.m., but they took out the pills and replaced them with a tracking device, according to the affidavit.

Less than an hour later, Ligon drove to the house, retrieved the parcel and left. Agents trailed him and watched him go to a home on East 246th Street in Euclid. He later left the home with the opened package, backed out of the driveway and drove away, the affidavit states.

A postal inspector tried to pull Ligon over, but Ligon drove around his car and down Shoreview Avenue and threw the package out of his Jeep’s window, court records show.

As Ligon tried to turn onto East 266th Street, he lost control of his Jeep, drove through a lawn and over a real estate sign, the affidavit states. He abandoned the car and ran away, and investigators were unable to find him.

Ligon eluded authorities for more than a month, until his arrest in West Virginia on April 11. Wheeling police said he was caught with crack cocaine, heroin, marijuana and prescription pills, and initially gave the name “Timothy Norman.”

At the time of his arrest, Ligon was still supposed to be serving a sentence for a 2011 drug case. In that one, Ligon was listed on an indictment the nickname “Dirty Ray” and was near the top of a pyramid of 30 drug dealers that prosecutors said sold heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine in the Cleveland area.

He pleaded guilty to drug and money laundering conspiracy charges. U.S. District Judge Sara Lioi sentenced him to 140 months in federal prison, and another federal judge added on another two years for violating his probation in a previous drug case.

However, Lioi reduced Ligon’s sentence to 100 months in July 2015 because of a change in how the U.S. Sentencing Commission calculated sentencing recommendations based on the quantity of drugs at issue in a case.

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