Lebanon man sentenced to 24 years for meth trafficking

(From the U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri)

A Lebanon, Mo., man was sentenced in federal court today for possessing methamphetamine that was hidden in computer hard drives that were mailed to a neighbor’s residence.

Adam E. Billings, 43, of Lebanon, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool to 24 years and four months in federal prison without parole.

Billings pleaded guilty on Oct. 24, 2017, to possessing methamphetamine with the intent to distribute. He admitted that he had received methamphetamine through the mail 10 times, with quantities ranging from a couple of ounces to a pound. Billings paid a neighbor $100 for allowing the packages to be delivered to his residence.

The investigation began on Jan. 20, 2016, when the Lebanon Post Office received a suspicious package on which a K-9 alerted to the presence of a controlled substance. The next day, two envelopes arrived at the post office, addressed to the same residence. A K-9 again indicated the presence of a controlled substance in both envelopes.

Investigators arranged for a controlled delivery of the envelopes. A resident at the address took possession of the parcels, then took the parcels next door to Billings’s residence. Law enforcement officers searched Billings’s residence and found the two envelopes, which had been emptied, as well as another envelope that contained 110.1 grams of pure methamphetamine. Billings stated that he took the hard drives out of the just-delivered envelopes, removed the methamphetamine from the hard drives, and placed the methamphetamine in the third envelope. In the master bedroom, an officer found a methamphetamine pipe on top of a dresser, a black bag containing a digital scale with visible powder residue on a nightstand and four computer hard drives which had been opened.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nhan D. Nguyen. It was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Lake Area Narcotics Enforcement Group.