Woman arrested in Lee County for attempting to smuggle meth into prison

LEESBURG — Three and a half ounces of methamphetamine destined for Valdosta State Prison was intercepted Friday by the Lee County Narcotics Team, the Office of Professional Standards, and the Department of Community Supervision in Lee County.

According to county officials, state prison inmate Kevin Michael Shaffer and his girlfriend, Marsha Ann Rogers, had been communicating by cellphone about a planned visit on March 11, during which Rogers planned to smuggle the drug into the Valdosta prison.

Officials at the Lee County Sheriff’s Office would not comment on specifics of how they were tipped off about the drug smuggling operation, but they did say that Rogers was arrested in January of this year by the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office for possession of methamphetamine and was out on bond for that offense.

“I can’t say exactly how they knew about it because there are still ongoing parts of this investigation,” Chief Lee County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Lewis Harris Jr. said. “Hopefully, we will be seeing some more arrests.”

According to Harris, the operation took more than nine hours as officials tracked Rogers from Tennessee, through Atlanta, before apprehending her in Lee County.

“Rogers was buying this stuff off the street and planned to smuggle it into the prison,” said Harris. “We know contraband gets into the prison system, and when it does get in there it becomes worth three times what it is worth on the street. The meth that Rogers had was worth about $7,000 on the street and $21,000 in prison.”

Officials said that both Rogers and Shaffer would face federal charges stemming from the arrest and that the Narcotics Team and Department of Corrections investigators were collecting information from Rogers’ cellphone in hopes of making further arrests.

Rogers and Shaffer have been charged with trafficking methamphetamine, using a communications facility to facilitate a drug transaction and conspiracy to traffic methamphetamine.