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On October 24, 2023, United States District Court Judge, William H. Steele, sentenced Haley Fuentes, of Selma, to 35 months imprisonment for conspiring to smuggle drugs into the Fountain Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Documents filed with the Court established that on March 27, 2022, the co-defendant, Robert O’Brien Rivers, an employee of the Alabama Department of Corrections, entered state property to report for duty at G.K Fountain Correctional Facility. On this morning officers at the facility were performing searches of employees and employee vehicles as they arrived to work. During the search of Rivers’ food items, officers observed two black bowls containing frozen rice. Upon further inspection of the rice bowls, officers found black taped objects underneath the rice. The taped objects contained 244 grams of methamphetamine and 510 grams of marijuana.

Court documents showed that Rivers knowingly received the drugs from people outside the prison to smuggle into an inmate in the prison and that he had done so on multiple occasions in the past. Fuentes and a third co-defendant, Jarvis Callens, had provided drugs to Rivers in the past to smuggle into the prison. On December 25, 2021, Fuentes and Callens were stopped by a Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Deputy with 165 grams of methamphetamine they were attempting to bring to Rivers so he could smuggle it into the prison. Law enforcement did not know at the time the methamphetamine was bound for Rivers. Rivers was previously sentenced by the Court to 54 months imprisonment and Callens was previously sentenced to 168 months, for their roles in the conspiracy.

The case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Alabama Department of Corrections, Investigations and Intelligence Division, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney George F. May.