A onetime Raines High School football quarterback is facing a 35-year federal prison sentence for operating a multimillion-dollar drug ring with apparent cartel connections that he led from behind bars.
“The amount of money was staggering. The amount of drugs was staggering,” Senior U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan said as he handed down terms for Aaron Jarvis McGhee and four other members of a Jacksonville ring that handled large shipments of methamphetamine, fentanyl and other drugs from suppliers in Mexico.
McGhee, 40, had already been locked up for 11 years for other crimes and “it’s just frankly unbelievable that he was willing to do this and was able to do this,” Corrigan said April 10.
Investigators don’t know the full scale of the operation, but $1.6 million seized from the group apparently reflected operations from just a matter of weeks, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elisibeth Adams told the judge.
A court document from McGhee’s April 2025 guilty plea said an unnamed cooperating defendant reported moving cocaine, fentanyl and meth from Houston to Jacksonville two to three times a week between April 2022 and August 2022.
The shipments that document described, if accurate, would add up to at least 105 pounds of coke, 35 pounds of fentanyl and 176 pounds of meth over four months.
The drugs were bought from “Mexican sources of supply,” court records said.
From football fields to prison
McGhee admitted conspiring to distribute fentanyl and meth for 13 months, from April 2022 until May 2023. Described in a sentencing memo as a 2004 Raines graduate whose athletic scholarship to Central State University in Ohio lasted just one year, he had been charged with drug crimes repeatedly since age 21 and had developed contacts he used to run the ring.
He was serving time in 2023 at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, a compound of prisons in Sumter County, but used a contraband cell phone to stay in touch with suppliers and ring members.
Oddly enough, McGhee was at least the second former Duval County football standout sentenced this year to 35 years behind bars for running a drug ring. Former Ed White High player Nathaniel Hatcher received the same term in February.
Despite pleading guilty, Adams said members of McGhee’s group shared little detail about the ring’s operations with investigators.
Disgraced lawyer investigated
One member, 39-year-old Shikita James, did reduce her sentence by cooperating with law enforcement, but that was by sharing information that helped lead to a Jacksonville attorney, Nah-Deh Simmons, pleading guilty in state court in January to conspiring to commit perjury involving an unrelated murder case.
Simmons, who received probation on the perjury conspiracy charge, was not part of the drug ring.
A sentencing memo from James’ attorney, Darcy Galnor, said Simmons had repeatedly visited James and two of her co-defendants in jail after her September 2023 arrest, although he didn’t represent them.
Simmons deposited more than $1,000 in James’ commissary account and state and federal investigations “revealed that Mr. Simmons was attempting to influence Ms. James’ testimony on behalf of an unnamed co-conspirator,” Galnor wrote.
It’s not clear how that influence could have affected the case.
$824,000 in home, $773,000 in suitcases
James, who was sentenced to 14 years behind bars, had about $824,000 on hand when investigators searched her home in Arlington’s Charter Point in May 2023. They also found about 14.75 pounds of fentanyl, 2.2 pounds of heroin and about 9.5 pounds of methamphetamine, which were kept at the house to transfer to other dealers but apparently had toxic effects after enough incidental contact.
“All you need to know is that Ms. James was being sickened just dealing with the drugs,” Adams told Corrigan.
The month before James’ home was raided, federal agents had also seized about $773,000 and 11 pounds of fentanyl in suitcases that a court document said two ring members, Natra Antonio Jones and Bobby Harvey Jr., brought to Jacksonville International Airport for a flight to Houston. Agents watched James drive the men to the airport for the trip, the document said.
Jones, 33, was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison.
Harvey, 28, was sentenced to 10 years, a mandatory minimum for the major fentanyl possession charge he had admitted.
The fifth member, 51-year-old truck driver Johnny Angelo Pack, was sentenced to 17 years and six months for overseeing transportation of the group’s drugs.
McGhee, who could have faced life in prison, would normally have received some credit for taking responsibility by pleading guilty and admitting his crimes, but Adams convinced the judge McGhee hadn’t lived up to a normal plea requirement of not committing more crimes.
She called a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent, Jeff Crook, who testified McGhee was using coded language in phone calls to communicate about shipments as recently as last month.
Crook said the calls, made from lockup, were with an unknown Hispanic man who has talked with McGhee for a long time without authorities being able to identify him.
“We do believe he’s in Mexico,” the agent said.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Ex-Raines QB gets 35-year sentence for running drug ring from prison
Reporting by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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