By Adam Ferrise
cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A former Cleveland resident was sentenced to six months in prison Monday for using a drone to drop cellphones and tobacco to inmates at a private prison.
Jason Totty, 37, now living in Arizona, crashed his drone in February 2021 after he flew it into the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown.
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U.S. District Judge David Ruiz handed down the prison sentence, along with one year on post-prison supervision.
Totty was linked to the drone via fingerprints and other electronic evidence, Ruiz said.
Totty previously pleaded guilty to illegally flying an unregistered drone and smuggling contraband into a prison.
He apologized during the hearing and said his life had turned around in the years since leaving Cleveland. He has his own handyman business and works as a hotel janitor.
“I don’t want to keep coming back here to Ohio,” Totty said. “I’m not the same person I was four years ago.”
Totty’s attorney, Leif Christman, argued that Totty should serve probation, house arrest or serve prison time on the weekends.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brenna Fasko stressed that Totty should serve prison time, noting his criminal history. He was sentenced to five years in prison for a series of incidents from 2011 to 2013, including robberies in Cleveland and South Euclid, a burglary in East Cleveland and illegal gun possession.
Totty was also convicted in 2019 of conspiring with a woman to smuggle contraband into the Richland Correctional Institution state prison.
He was sentenced to three years on probation. Totty was on probation at the time he flew the drone into the prison, which is run by a private company, CoreCivic.
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