Texas Inmate Used CashApp in Jailhouse Drug Ring; $30,000 Seized From Commissary Account

Where there is a will, there is a way. Just ask officials with Harris County Jail.

Attorneys with Harris County District Attorney's Office recently announced that they had filed charges against three people for their part in a complex drug operation that brought narcotics into Harris County Jail.

Joshua Sinclair Owens, 35, is said to have spearheaded a complex drug operation from behind bars, selling papers soaked with synthetic marijuana to other inmates. It is unknown how the drugs entered the facility.

Owens had his customers pay for the narcotics through a CashApp account. Recorded calls revealed that two family members managed the money in the account. Owen's stepsister, Lativia Armiss Bailey, 31, and his 42-year-old cousin, Nathanael Campbell, would transfer the funds to his commissary account via a kiosk.

The investigation was triggered by a series of fentanyl overdose deaths in early February 2024. Court documents obtained by ABC 13 state that investigators began listening to phone calls between the relatives in the same month. Then, contraband was found when jailers searched Owens' cell.

But the cornerstone of the money laundering charge rests on the increasingly large amounts of money deposited in the inmate's account. According to authorities, in October 2023, Owen's commissary account balance was $200. By June 2024, the balance was closer to $30,000.

"(Owens) is currently making thousands upon thousands of dollars in the Harris County jail smuggling, distributing, and selling drugs within the jail," said one of the prosecutors with Harris County DA at a press conference on July 23.

Owens has been held at Harris County jail since 2022 on a litany of violent charges, including murder. His co-conspirators, Bailey and Campbell, are also charged with engaging in organized crime.

All three face up to life in prison for their charges.

It is unknown how the synthetic marijuana was brought into the Harris County jail and prosecutors say that the investigation is far from over. According to the District Attorney Kim Ogg, Owen's drug operation is suspected, but not proven, to be linked to several fentanyl overdose deaths of inmates in the facility.

"It is far from being done. We hope to have more charges in the future." said Kimberly Smith, a prosecutor with the DA's public corruption division.