Image: U.S. Attorney Rob McGuire leads a press conference on Thursday afternoon with federal, state and local law enforcement officials. Image Credit: Martin B. Cherry / Nashville Banner
**Note from The Tennessee Conservative – This article posted here for informational purposes only.
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by Steven Hale, [The Nashville Banner, Creative Commons] –
One of the criminal cases touted by a new law enforcement task force offers a glimpse into the logistics of a well-known problem at Tennessee’s largest and most infamous prison.
The federal criminal indictment, filed in September, details the way an incarcerated man, his girlfriend on the outside and three correctional officers allegedly conspired to smuggle drugs like fentanyl, heroin and cocaine into CoreCivic’s Trousdale Turner Correctional Center using contraband cell phones, thousands of dollars in Cash App transfers and daytime drug handoffs at a nearby hotel.
The case was one of several highlighted that was attributed to the work of the Homeland Security Task Force, a newly constituted group of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies officials said are working together on cases involving violence and drug trafficking with ties to transnational criminal organizations. But there is nothing new about reports of hard drugs making their way into Trousdale Turner.
A federal lawsuit filed last year by the family of a man who died of a fentanyl overdose there alleged that officers at Trousdale were running “an elaborate scheme to smuggle, distribute, and profit from inmate consumption of opioids and other drugs,” which included having drones fly over the prison walls and drop drugs into the yard. The Banner also reported that nearly two dozen Trousdale employees had been criminally charged in 2023 and 2024 for crimes including smuggling drugs into the prison.
A CoreCivic spokesperson told the Banner at the time that the company expects all of its employees “to conduct business with professionalism, respect, integrity, duty and excellence” and that the company takes “swift action” to address any violations of policy, procedure or the law.
Drugs and other contraband have been a problem in prisons across Tennessee, including those run by the state and others operated by CoreCivic. The Banner reported on similar issues at CoreCivic’s South Central Correctional Facility last month.
The investigation outlined in the recent federal indictment adds more to the picture, thanks to the contents of a contraband cell phone discovered by prison officers during a search in June 2024. According to the indictment, the incarcerated man who had been in possession of the phone — allegedly a Blood gang member 14 years into a 22-year sentence — used it to coordinate a flow of drugs into the prison with the help of his girlfriend and three Trousdale officers, including a captain who has since been fired. One of the other prison officers charged in the case allegedly told the FBI agent investigating the case that she had been “recruited by a superior correctional officer to make some extra money.”
The indictment also describes how the incarcerated man allegedly had his girlfriend outside the prison deliver drugs to the prison officers at various locations. One spot for the alleged exchanges was the Candlewood Suites hotel in Lebanon where, according to the indictment, CoreCivic pays for some staff to be temporarily housed while they are working at the prison. The indictment also accuses the incarcerated man of directing his girlfriend to pay the officers using various pseudonymous Cash App accounts. One of the charged officers allegedly told the investigating FBI agent that she used an account belonging to her daughter’s boyfriend in an attempt to conceal the transactions.
In one text exchange cited in the indictment, the incarcerated man tells an officer he’ll pay her $2,000 up front and $2,000 once the job is done plus a potential “bonus.” After receiving the package of contraband from the incarcerated man’s girlfriend, according to another cited text exchange, the officer wrote “Yea you expect to get all ts [this] & the packs get bigger and bigger you being greedy.” Once the officers brought the drugs inside the prison, according to the indictment, the incarcerated man would sell and distribute them to other people inside. The indictment also includes photos taken from the contraband cell phone that show drugs and other contraband in various forms of packaging. Other cited text messages describe the sale of fentanyl, Suboxone strips, synthetic marijuana and methamphetamine.
In March 2025, around nine months after prison officers initially found the contraband cell phone, Trousdale Turner staff conducted another search of the unit where the charged incarcerated man was housed. According to the indictment, they found approximately 38 grams of fentanyl, enough for thousands of potentially lethal doses.
