BILLINGS – Laurel resident Jefferson Scott Perrigo was sentenced Thursday to 17 years in federal prison for dealing meth and gun charges.
Perrigo, 45, pleaded guilty to the charges and will also serve five years supervised release. U.S. District Judge Susan P. Watters presided. There was no plea agreement.
Prosecutors said Perrigo was found with 12.5 pounds of meth, according to a release from U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme.
Prosecutors said an informant told police that Perrigo was distributing meth in Billings, according to Alme.
Investigators used a confidential informant to make controlled meth buys from an associate of Perrigo’s known to deal meth for him and placing tracking devices on vehicles of both Perrigo and his associate, prosecutors said.
The vehicles were often seen at a storage unit in Billings.
After getting a search warrant for Perrigo’s vehicle and the storage unit, agents found a semi-automatic handgun in a backpack, body armor and three packages of meth totaling about 2.5 pounds in the vehicle and 10 packages of meth, each weighing about a pound, prosecutors said.
The amount of meth seized is the equivalent of about 45,359 doses.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cassady Adams and Lori Suek prosecuted the case, which was investigated by the Eastern Montana High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force and the FBI’s Big Sky Western Transnational Organized Crime Task Force.
The case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods, which is the centerpiece of the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction efforts.
