You don’t expect to hear this regularly, but it happened. A pastor in Kentucky is accused of running the largest pill trafficking organization in the state.
Neighbors are shocked to find out that the preacher wasn’t as much into praising God as he was into selling dope.
“I was shocked, because I live right here and I never see anyone go in or out of there,” said Mike Newsome, a neighbor of Pastor Scott Gilliam, seen left, who is accused of running the ring. “I did know some of the people that went to church there. They’d stop and talk to me. They were all nice folks.”
Police say that the pastor hid the drugs inside the wall of a room that looked like a playroom for children.
“Large quantity of pain pills. Oxycodone 30-milligram tablets from inside the church,” the lead detective said. “It was a room that was located toward the rear of the church that was like a children’s playroom. Pills were concealed inside the wall.”
Gilliam was the pastor at Holiness Tabernacle Church in Olive Hill. He was arrested last week, along with Brian Logan and charged with a conspiracy to distribute oxycodone. “Tens of thousands of pills that have a street value of $40 to $45 each. So you’re talking [a] multimillion dollar trafficking organization,” said one of the officers in the case.
Another neighbor said the pastor was respected throughout the community. “Nobody would ever dreamed this,” the neighbor said. “It’s just unbelievable, completely.” “[He] pastored a church while he was engaging in a major drug trafficking organization [which] is pretty heinous,” the lead detective said.
