A one-time Nassau County lawman who banked more than $400,000 by stealing drugs from the police for dealers to resell for him will serve 17 years and six months in prison, a federal judge said Monday.
Former Nassau County Sheriff’s Sgt. James Darrell Hickox, “disgraced law enforcement and the agency you worked for,” U.S. District Judge Wendy Berger told the 17-year law enforcement veteran.
Hickox was indicted in 2023 along with then-Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Joshua Earrey, who worked with him on a federal drug task force that removed shipments of marijuana, cocaine, fentanyl and other outlawed drugs from cars and trucks targeted for seemingly routine traffic stops and examinations. Earrey also pleaded guilty but hasn’t been sentenced yet.
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Hickox, 39, admitted last year to stealing more than a half-ton of marijuana and pounds of cocaine to pass onto different dealers to resell while he worked as part of the task force operated through the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
In the runup to his sentencing, however, prosecutors focused instead on arguments that Hickox and Earrey also staged a fake bust with a friendly dealer in hopes of getting six kilograms ― more than 13 pounds ― of potentially deadly fentanyl without the dealer having to pay his supplier.
“Based on the available evidence, Hickox intended to traffic in fentanyl when he staged the fake traffic stop and took custody of the associated kilograms of narcotics,” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hamilton argued to the judge last week, laying groundwork to stiffen a sentence that legally could be anywhere between five and 50 years behind bars.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Stealing drugs on fed task force gets ex-Nassau County cop prison time