A 33-year-old New York man has been sentenced in federal court for conspiring to distribute cocaine base, heroin and fentanyl in central Maine, U.S. Attorney Halsey B. Frank announced Wednesday.

Jamie “Booger” Betances, of Rochester, New York, was sentenced to 126 months in prison and three years of supervised release by Judge John A. Woodcock. Betances pleaded guilty to the charges on Oct. 16, 2018, while he was serving a five-year sentence at Maine State Prison for aggravated drug trafficking in Somerset County.

Jamie "Booger" Betances

According to court documents, between June 2015 and March 2017, Betances conspired with others to acquire crack, heroin and fentanyl in Rochester and transport it to central Maine for distribution. Betances traveled from Rochester to manage the operation in Maine where drugs were distributed from 12 to 15 local residents’ houses.

Betances is one of 16 people who were charged in a Rochester-based conspiracy to distribute drugs in central Maine.

Darrell Newton, 39, of Rochester, who was named by others in court as the ringleader of the operation, was sentenced in federal court in Bangor recently to serve 20 years in prison and five years of supervised release for conspiring to distribute heroin, cocaine base and fentanyl, according to Frank in an earlier press release. He pleaded guilty to the charges in October 2018.

Newton is also known by the names “Coast” and “D-Coast,” according to Frank.

In September 2018, two of Newton’s co-conspirators were sentenced.

Denton Worrell, also known as “Lil D,” was sentenced to 10 years after pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute and possessing with intent to distribute controlled substances.

Worrell, then 21, identified himself as a “supervisor” of the conspiracy and Newton as the leader, according to a prosecution memo that cites a pre-sentencing report filed at U.S. District Court in Bangor.

Jason Folkner, of Gardiner and Augusta, was also sentenced in September 2018 to 72 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Folkner, also known as “Crazy,” was one of the Mainers who allowed his residence to be used as a location where people could buy drugs that came from Rochester.

At least 13 other people were tied to the case, according to officials told the Kennebec Journal in June 2017.

Those individuals include Jeffrey Johnson, of Gardiner; Russell Truman, of Gardiner; Donald Morang, of Augusta; Alex Brumfield of Rochester, New York and Augusta; Brent Hercules, also known as “Herc,” of Rochester; and Betances.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office with assistance from the Augusta Police Department and prosecuted as part of the Department of Justice’s Strategy to Combat the Opioid Epidemic.