State prisoner pleads guilty in federal drug conspiracy case

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — A Rock Hill man could be sentenced up to 40 years and fined millions of dollars in a trafficking conspiracy that saw narcotics brought into a South Carolina state prison, a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina says.

DeQavion Keyon DaJohn DeShae Cook, 31, pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute methamphetamine and fentanyl.

While Cook was a prisoner of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, he was responsible from 2015 to 2023 for selling drugs that were obtained from another man who was not imprisoned, evidence obtained in the investigation revealed. The drugs, which included crystal methamphetamine and pills that resembled 30 mg oxycodone tablets, were produced with fentanyl by the second man or others at locations in the Rock Hill and Charlotte, North Carolina, areas.

A third man was used to take the drugs from the second man and deliver them to a prison guard, who would bring them to Cook at the prison, the release says.

In addition to the decadeslong possible prison sentence, Cook could be fined up to $5 million and sentenced to four years of post-release supervision. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis, who accepted his guilty plea, will sentence Cook after receiving a report prepared by the U.S. Probation Office. The sentence will begin after he completes his current term for another federal violation.

The case was investigated by the FBI, York County Multi-Jurisdictional Drug Enforcement Unit, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Rock Hill Police Department and York County and Richland County sheriff’s departments and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney William K. Witherspoon.