For about five years U.S. Drug Enforcement officer and Nassau county sheriff’s deputy James Darrell Hickox used his position with law enforcement to moonlight as a drug dealer. He once even stole cocaine from an evidence locker and replaced it with a 3D printed brick. His various schemes didn’t work out and now he’s been sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Hickox was arrested in 2023 and pleaded guilty to the various charges against him in 2024. He ran his drug dealing game while employed as a deputy for the Nassau County Sheriff’s department in Florida and as a DEA agent. He pleaded guilty to charges of stealing drugs and money, transferring drugs to dealers for sale on the street, and tax evasion. He made more than $420,000 as a drug dealer and the IRS was upset it didn’t get its cut.
The schemes weren’t sophisticated. Hicox worked with other law enforcement officers to set up drug busts and conduct traffic stops of known drug dealers. They’d do the bust and skim money and drugs off the top or steal them from evidence and then give them to street-level dealers to sell for them. In one instance, they stole more than 1,000 pounds of weed from an evidence locker, claimed to have burned it, and sold it.
In one of the more bizarre schemes, Hickox stole a kilogram of cocaine from an evidence locker and replaced it with a brick he’d made in a 3D printer. He sprinkled the fake brick with real cocaine in an attempt to make it look real. This is the drug-stealing equivalent of a teenager bulking up their bed with stuffed animals in the hope their parents don’t notice they’ve snuck out.
When the police figured out what was going on and raided Hickox’s house, it was stocked with four weapons pulled from evidence lockers and marked for destruction as well as an illegally modified machine gun. Then they came upon his garage, which was marked by the sign “Gator’s Man Cave.”
Inside “Gator’s Man Cave,” cops found the drugs. There were 260 pills containing methamphetamine and 263 grams of a powdery mix of cocaine and fentanyl.
The motivations behind Hickox’s scheme shifted depending on who was asked. In court, Hickox said this was a Breaking Bad situation. He’d gotten a cancer diagnosis and that he was worried about leaving money behind for his family after he died. “I recognize the cancer diagnosis and health issues, but I don’t see how that causes an individual to engage in what you did. I’m having a hard time with that,” Judge Wendy Berger said.
Talking to a local TV station, Hickox’s parents said that the DEA had turned him into a drug dealer. “They have to live two lives. You’re out slingin’ dope for the DEA and then you go home and be a family man,” his father said. “I think because he was around it for 10 years. He was a drug dealer for 10 years. If he hadn’t had a badge…that’s the job DEA has him doin’…he was a drug dealer. So he becomes a drug dealer and everyone’s actin’ surprised. Why are you so surprised? That’s what ya’ll had him doin’ for 10 years.”
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English (US) ·