Meet the drone pilot who flooded Ohio prisons with drugs

This story was produced in collaboration by The Marshall Project - Cleveland, The Columbus Dispatch, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and Canton Repository. Under the cover of darkness, Cory Sutphin piloted his drone directly to an open prison cell window, where a hand grabbed the payload: Drugs, cellphones and other contraband. For months, Sutphin operated a delivery service, like DoorDash, for drugs inside Ohio prisons. He taught himself how to fly drones he'd buy off Facebook Marketplace. Google Maps gave him a bird's eye view of the properties. He started in the drug smuggling ring as a driver in the spring of 2021, when he pocketed $1,200 for a less than three-hour round-trip to the two state prisons in Chillicothe. Easy money, he thought. "I think about it now, it was the dumbest thing I could've possibly ever done in my life. Dumbest thing. Hands down," said Sutphin, who is now serving a nearly five-year sentence at Chillicothe Correctional Institution. Sutphin supplied the black market with dangerous drugs that feed addiction and bring violence and death inside Ohio prisons. After investigators got a lucky break, they shut off the pipeline used by Sutphin and his collaborators. But that didn't stop the drug trade. Now Sutphin has a front row seat to the destruction that smugglers cause. The case resulted in 116 felony counts against Sutphin and two others. But investigators knew of only a fraction of the drug drops they made. At the time, the father of three needed cash for child support and a divorce lawyer. He quit his welding job and pivoted to drug smuggling. In just seven months, he said he pulled in about $100,000. He didn't think about the potential for arrest, conviction and incarceration. And he didn't consider the harm he was doing in moving drugs into state prisons. Instead, he asked for more work. Sutphin scoped out the best places to launch drones and minimize the chance of getting busted. "With a drone, I can just sit a half a mile out or a quarter-mile out, and you're not going to know I'm there, other than when you hear it," he said. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has layers of drone detection technology, but federal aviation regulations prohibit the agency from disrupting signals, taking over drones, or shooting them down because that could interfere with civilian air traffic. Sutphin said he managed to get past the detection systems about half the time. When he crashed a drone, he had another 30 or 40 stacked in a spare bedroom that he could pick up and use. He disguised the packages: putting drugs in empty chip bags to make them look like trash littering the yard, or even using a dead bird's carcass. He figured a corrections officer would be unlikely to pick up and examine a dead bird in the yard. Another time, he attached a fishing line and sinker to a package he dropped on the rooftop of a prison building, draping the line over the side for the recipient to pull and retrieve. Illegally smuggled cellphones are used to communicate drop details to the recipients. Sutphin rationalized that he needed money for child support for his kids, now ages 10, 8 and 7. But he burned through the cash. "I'd go to the bar and drop $1,000 in a night just because I knew tomorrow, hey, I'm going to make it in four hours," Sutphin said. "I had every pair of Jordans you could have. At one point, I bought me and all my kids 18-karat gold Cuban chains. Yeah, it was ridiculous." Sutphin and his crew members abused drugs, particularly pills and methamphetamine, while dropping them into prisons. "There'd be times where we'd be out there, sitting and just waiting and doing drugs," he said. "I'd look over, and he'd be snorting a pill, and I'd eat a piece of meth." A successful drop brought a rush of adrenaline. But Sutphin and his crew had gut-wrenching close calls. Some nights they spent hours lying flat in the woods near a prison, hoping they wouldn't get caught. Sutphin, now 32, disclosed nothing in interviews with a reporter about the upper levels of the smuggling ring. But he said those calling the shots wouldn't let him refuse an assignment, even if he had his kids that day. One day, when his ex-wife refused his last-minute request to watch the kids, he took them on a road trip to pick up pounds of fentanyl and crystal meth from his supplier, he said. "They wouldn't, obviously, know what we were doing because I would make it fun. We'd stop off at the park, we'd get ice cream, and then the next thing you know, I'd stop at a random parking lot. I'd open my trunk, some dude would throw some shit in the trunk, and I'd drive off." The investigation The morning of May 28, 2021, troopers got a call about a Phantom 4 drone that had crashed in the recreation yard at Toledo Correctional Institution. The drone carried eight cell phones, SIM cards, fentanyl and Suboxone strips — all tightly wrapped together in black electrical tape. But it carried something more telling: A micro SD card with a video clip of a bearded white man flying the drone in a neighborhood as young children played in the yard around him. As the man practiced maneuvering the drone, the camera picked up a Ford SUV in the background. Troopers ran the plate on the Ford, checked social media for the owner, and identified the drone pilot as Robert Faulkner of Columbus. It marked a big break for investigators. They checked 11 phone numbers connected to Faulkner against calls on recorded lines made to incarcerated men. Investigators heard Faulkner speaking in code about his $2,500 delivery fee, the 2-pound payload capacity on his new drones, and his contacts with prison gang leaders. He bragged about dropping 10 cell phones and an ounce of fentanyl in one delivery. Within days, troopers got a search warrant to start tracking Faulkner's phone. They mapped Faulkner's cell phone locations and cross-checked that against drone drops in state prisons. Scientists at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation checked confiscated drone packages for latent prints and DNA evidence, matching them to Sutphin, Faulkner and a third man, Charles Gibbs, another member of the smuggling ring. Investigators continued listening to Faulkner's calls with inmates, trying to find out when and where the next drops would be. Sometimes, they intercepted the packages shortly after they were dropped. At 2:44 a.m. on July 8, 2021, the smugglers flew a package directly to a cell window at Ross Correctional. Prison officials found an incarcerated man sitting on a toilet with the contraband floating in the water. Investigators subpoenaed Amazon purchase and delivery records connected to Faulkner's address. They pulled and searched his trash, put GPS trackers on two vehicles, and watched his house from a pole camera. Faulkner declined to comment for this story. In September 2021, troopers checked out a report of a BMW parked in the weeds by railroad tracks near Mansfield Correctional. Through the window, they could see a drone battery, camouflage clothes and boots. They towed the car, got a search warrant and put a tracker on it. A few days later, someone picked up the BMW from the tow yard. From May to October, investigators gathered evidence tying Faulkner and his team to 11 drone drops intercepted by officials at five state prisons. Sutphin said that's just a fraction of what they executed. "If I had to put a number on it, around 100 to 120 drops with about 50 to 70 being successful in about eight or nine prisons," he said. When the patrol searched Faulkner's house in Columbus, troopers collected evidence Faulkner had saved on electronic devices, including videos of drone drops into prisons. On one recorded call to an incarcerated man, investigators caught Faulkner in a self-reflective moment. "As of late, I've really been thinking about the choices I've made," Faulkner said in July 2021. "When I was in prison, I had an opportunity to better myself. But if drugs were coming in consistently, you could rob someone of an opportunity of bettering themselves." The arrests Police officers holding AR-15s pounded on Sutphin's door at 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 16, 2021, he said. They had a search warrant for his SUV. "At first, I was scared for my kids. I was like, 'Oh, my god,' and it was like, 'I can't just let them kick in my door. That's going to traumatize my children,'" Sutphin said. Across town the same day, officers searched Faulkner's house, where they found $319,820 worth of illegal drugs, weapons, cellphones and drones. Sutphin blames Faulkner for talking too freely on the recorded prison phones and sharing photos of the two of them and other crew members with drugs and drones. The grand jury returned indictments against Sutphin, Faulkner and Gibbs for more than 100 felony charges connected to drone drops at five state prisons in 2021. Since 2022, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has added a multilayer drone detection system for 21 prisons and purchased two mobile units. 'Stupid and foolish' All three men took plea deals to lesser charges. Sutphin got the lightest sentence — four years, 11 months in prison. Faulkner got 15 years and Gibbs a decade. Sutphin's release date is in July 2028. Once he is free, Sutphin wants to return to his home state of Michigan, become an electrician and repair his relationship with his children, who live with his ex-wife in Michigan. Sutphin thought his crime was victimless. Now inside, he sees people lying to their family to get money for drugs and then being incapacitated while high — convulsing, drooling, unable to move. It changed his perspective. "I was literally flooding multiple prisons in the state of Ohio with just the worst of drugs. And it kinda sucks. Everyone says, 'Oh, what you did was cool.' What I did was stupid and foolish."