A Hennepin County corrections officer and 10 other people have been indicted by a federal grand jury, accused of dealing more than 26 pounds of methamphetamine over the last two years in the Twin Cities and Owatonna, Minn., area.
The 26-year old corrections officer, Ashley Mariakas has worked in the county's Plymouth workhouse since January. Law enforcement authorities said she was monitored on tape recordings talking to her boyfriend — a prisoner at the Lino Lakes Correctional Facility — about the drug operation. That prisoner, Joshua Ortega, 33, has a previous record of attempting to import cocaine, according to state records.
This is the second time in recent months that a Hennepin corrections officer has been federally indicted. In an unrelated case in May, a female officer, Jacquelyn Burnes was among five people charged in a straw-purchase gun conspiracy case. Burnes and a Minneapolis South High School cook were charged with buying guns for gang members involved in several shootings across Minneapolis. Like Mariakas, Burnes was romantically involved with a prisoner.
In the drug dealing case, seven of the defendants, including Mariakas and Ortega, are from Owatonna, the receiving location of methamphetamine that was smuggled in from Mexico and Texas, according to authorities.
Two other co-defendants from Owatonna — Daniel Segura, 30 and his girlfriend, Sage Ollerman, 25 — were arrested in January in Texas, following a fugitive-missing persons report. Segura was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service on a parole violation stemming from a second-degree murder case in which he allegedly stabbed a man during a fight over drugs in 2001, records show.
The others who were indicted are: Mark Thomas Buskovick, 30, of Owatonna; Rigoberto Basurto, 21, of Fresno, Calif.; Jamie Lee Hunt, 27, of Owatonna; Jeremy Joseph Hunt, 28, of Owatonna; Jason Ortega, 33, of Owatonna; Salvador Ortega, 32, of Owatonna; and Dalton Quimby, 21, of Rochester.
Paul McEnroe • 612-673-1745
