Attorney General Dave Sunday tracks drugs between schools in 2 counties

PLUM, Pa. — Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday made the trip to Westmoreland County because he said it is where the investigation started.

It led them to a warehouse in Plum, which is one of three operating an illegal drug ring that he says was specifically targeting children.

“When a kid sees this,” Attorney General Dave Sunday said while holding up one of the THC products. “And it’s being sold in any store that they can walk into, and they can start buying these products, and they think it’s candy or they think it’s something geared towards them and see their friends using it…disaster can strike.”

A dozen people, some from the Pittsburgh area, are now charged with distributing illegal high-potency marijuana and THC-related products to vape shops throughout Pennsylvania.

“We also served warrants on bank accounts, and that’s how we learned how profitable the empire was,” said Sunday. “We also learned how they moved money through LLC fronts so it could not be detected and traced to the illegal proceeds.”

The AG said the investigation started in Westmoreland County when they traced products kids in local schools were taking to local stores last year.

From there, investigators raided several vape shops selling the illegal products. Sunday was joined by the Plum Borough police chief, the Westmoreland sheriff, and d-a Nicole Ziccarelli. She said it’s clear children are the target.

“Everything that we saw, almost all of it was geared towards youth,” said Westmoreland County District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli. “Everything was intriguing or ‘you got to try this’ because it seems to be interesting; it sounds like something you want to try. So that’s really when we said we’ve got to make it a point, and then it all started to come together from there across the commonwealth.”

Investigators collected 40 pallets with over 150 thousand products from the plum warehouse and say at least 90 percent of the products tested were found to be illegal.

Channel 11 asked some of the biggest questions parents might have: which Westmoreland County schools were a part of the investigation and which local stores?

But the attorney general said they would not answer those questions because the investigation is still continuing.

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