Business owners charged for selling meth ingredients

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Dozens of people have been charged with illegally selling large quantities of over-the-counter drugs used to make methamphetamine, U.S. Attorney Todd Graves said.

Graves announced Thursday that 38 business owners and employees were charged in four separate indictments on charges that include conspiracy to distribute pseudoephedrine, a common ingredient in over-the-counter cold medicines that is used to make meth, conspiracy to manufacture meth, money laundering and federal firearm violations.

Some of those charged are from Kansas and Arkansas.

The defendants include Roy James Hudspeth, vice president and chief executive officer of Handi-Rak, a Brookline-based company that sells products to convenience stores, and David L. Deputy, owner of a Forsyth shop called The Castle and D&D Enterprise, which distributes pseudoephedrine to convenience stores and other businesses. Also indicted were owners of nine liquor stores, convenience stores and other shops, 14 store clerks and nine others who worked for Hudspeth and Deputy.

"The legitimate sales of over-the-counter products can't be used as a smoke screen for an illicit black market," Graves said. "We will hold business owners accountable to follow the law, and we will prosecute the suppliers as aggressively as we prosecute meth manufacturers, because they are all links in the same chain."

It is illegal in Missouri for retailers to sell more than two boxes of pills containing pseudoephedrine to a person.

Police say they began to suspect Handi-Rak and D&D Distributing after tracking the purchases of some off-brand pseudoephedrine that kept turning up in raids on meth labs.

When suspects told police where they bought the pills, undercover officers visited the stores posing as meth cooks. According to police, most of the stores sold the officers as many pills as they wanted -- even multiple cases containing thousands of cold pills.

Missouri tops the nation in the number meth lab seizures. In 2003, authorities busted 2,860 meth labs. The second-ranking state, Iowa, had less than half as many seizures as Missouri.