Paul Lee Levitt may have thought he’d gone undetected while allegedly running an Orange County methamphetamine distribution network in 2012, but in January a federal grand jury filed a secret indictment against him and authorities finally arrested him this week.
According to the now unsealed five-count indictment, Levitt (a.k.a. Shorty) and Joseph Anthony Meza, a drug courier, unwittingly sold at least 55 grams of meth on various occasions to a confidential law enforcement informant.
The going rate of the street narcotic was $800 an ounce, the indictment alleges.
There’s no indication if Meza is also in custody.
Levitt, who was born in 1973, pleaded not guilty on all counts during a July 16 hearing.
U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford is scheduled to preside at a September 9 trial inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.