Prison Drug Smuggling Operation

So when they tell you there are no illegal drugs in prison....remember this.

Writer:

Andrew Travers

Byline:

Aspen Daily News Staff Writer

A pair of local brothers are implicated in an operation that allegedly brought narcotics into a state prison in Cañon City, where one of the men is currently incarcerated.

Authorities in Fremont County allege that Four Mile Correctional Center inmate and Aspen native Stefan Schutter enlisted his brother, Devin, to help bring cocaine and heroin into the prison, using covert drug deliveries by a milk truck driver.

Devin Schutter, who has eight unrelated criminal cases currently pending in Aspen — including charges for dealing cocaine, threatening to kill a local woman, and several alleged violations of his probation terms — was arrested here last month for violating the bail bond conditions in all eight of those cases, after a warrant was issued for him in Fremont County for his alleged role in the prison drug operation. Devin Schutter has three previous felony convictions. He turned 30 in Pitkin County Jail last week.

His younger brother, Stefan, was convicted of holding up Clark’s Market in August 1999 in one of a series of armed robberies carried out by local teenagers. He served six years in prison for that, was released in 2005, and was then arrested months later in Jefferson County in possession of an assault rifle, a revolver, more than 270 grams of cocaine, 220 grams of hallucinogenic mushrooms, 360-plus grams of marijuana, and smaller amounts of crack and heroin. Last year he was sentenced to a 10-year prison term for that transgression.

Devin faced a district judge in Aspen yesterday, during a hearing on whether the locally issued warrant had established probable cause for his Nov. 6 arrest at the Hickory House on Main Street. The warrant, issued by the Aspen Police Department, did not clearly present that he was free on bond when he allegedly contributed to the prison drug ring.

Chief District Judge James Boyd accepted an amended, corrected warrant yesterday and denied a request from Devin Schutter’s attorney to free his client on a zero-dollar bond, as a sanction for the police mistake. He remains in custody here on nearly $220,000 bond.

An investigator for the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) began tracking the Schutter brothers after he was tipped off earlier this year that drugs were being smuggled into the Cañon City prison by a milk truck driver named “Henry Ferstreat,” who was allegedly charging inmates $200 for packages of drugs he delivered, according to court documents. Subsequent investigation found the alleged drug courier’s last name was actually Verstraete.

The DOC investigator claims Federal Express packages were sent to Verstraete from Devin Schutter in Aspen.

The investigator, William Claspell, began tapping phone conversations between the Schutter brothers from the prison in July, when Stefan allegedly asked his brother to mail drugs to Verstraete concealed in a bottle of the muscle-building supplement Creatine Monohydrate.

Aspen Daily News