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Most everyone knows that drugs are quite often present inside a prison. What most people don’t know is how those drugs got in there? One way, apparently, is by using a drone.
We know this because, according to court documents, a man named James Key III of Eustis, Florida allegedly used a drone to deliver fentanyl and contraband cellphones into Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities in California, Florida, and South Carolina. An indictment filed last week claims that the 45-year-old Key performed this drone drug delivery service between Dec. 16, 2024, and Aug. 17, 2025.
An investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Prisons Special Investigative Services alleges Key conspired with Federal Bureau of Prisons inmates to apply fentanyl onto paper, bundling that paper, wrapping it in synthetic grass, and then delivering it by drone into the prisons.
If convicted, James Key III faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
Criminals can be creative (but not always smart) when delivering drugs
James Key III is far from the only person to ever use a drone to deliver illegal drugs. Just two weeks ago, another man in Florida crashed a drone that was carrying drugs he was allegedly trying to deliver to someone. He was arrested after he showed up at the homeowners’ door asking for it back.
“He’s out front in the driveway, holding the remote control for the drone that just crashed, and being an experienced criminal, he plays very coy about, ‘I was flying my drone. I live about a mile away, and I believe it crashed in this area, and I’m going in the backyard trying to find my drone,'” Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister told Fox 13 News.
Drones aren’t the only way criminals have tried, and failed to sneak drugs into prisons. Over the years, people have tried tricks like using a t-shirt cannon (and other types of cannons) to shoot the drugs over the prison walls, attaching packages of drugs to a kitten, soaking a cow costume in meth, and putting a backpack on a pigeon.