The Anderson County Sheriff says a drug case is being thrown out because an agent with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division gave false information to get arrest warrants.
Sheriff John Skipper held a news conference late Tuesday afternoon and said a joint drug bust that happened in November of last year involving SLED and his department resulted in 16 arrests. The state Attorney General's office is not going to prosecute those 16 people.
The AG's office tells Skipper the SLED agent responsible for getting search warrants in the case misrepresented information from a confidential informant.
SLED officials say the agent at the center of this incident was let go in March because of what happened. The AG's office says charges against the 16 people were dropped Tuesday.
Officials described the bust as a million-dollar drug organization that was operating out of the Upstate and moving in excess of $30 million worth of drugs every year.
More than 30 arrests in total were made in connection to the raid in mid-November of 2010.
Now, Sheriff Skipper says all their work has gone to waste.
"My officers, my narcotics officers in particular, put in many, many hours sitting up in the woods, watching some of these locations, and things like this, and it's very frustrating and disappointing to them," he said.
"We have plenty of evidence that these folks are guilty, let's don't get it wrong, I'm comfortable to say," explained Skipper. "We got all these defendants on audio recording of them plotting and planning and doing these drug deals."
Now that evidence is no good, 16 people are scot-free.
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