Thursday, June 30, 2011

Asbury Park | Drug deals, timelines, and comments

News stories last month about a former Asbury Park Press newsroom employee, charged with masterminding a multimillion-dollar drug trafficking ring, focused on a timeline federal prosecutors made public in a news release.

Christopher Erwin, 47, had led the ring selling more than 500,000 tablets of the prescription painkiller oxycodone "since at least as early as January 2009, and continuing for at least two years," prosecutors said.

But in reading their formal, 45-page criminal complaint, I stumbled across a detail I hadn't read before: A confidential source claimed Erwin started selling oxycodone to them much earlier -- around October 2007, the complaint says. That would have been just two months after he left the Press' employment, according to the newspaper's account of his arrest.

The paper did not disclose the circumstances under which Erwin left in August 2007.

The criminal complaint, and a string of comments posted to Gannett Blog by a reader who said they were Erwin, shed light on the post-Gannett years of one former employee whose life, according to prosecutors, spiraled into a drug dealing conspiracy.

Charge: $20K weekly income
Erwin was released from jail on $1 million bail after posting properties as collateral. He was placed under house arrest, with electronic monitoring. Some 21 other co-defendants, including two doctors who allegedly sold prescriptions to Erwin, have also been charged in what prosecutors call the Erwin Organization.

The criminal complaint includes allegations that Erwin, who lives in Barnegat, N.J., made as much as $20,000 weekly selling the highly addictive painkillers, all the while masquerading as a landscaper.

Meanwhile, a close review of Gannett Blog's comments in recent years shows a reader identifying themselves as "Chris Erwin" started posting here at least as long ago as Sept. 8, 2008. The reader said they'd worked at the Press "about 13-plus years."

"I never got a bad review and was rewarded with decent raises along the way," they said. "I started out as a $10-an-hour PT clerk and ended up making about 45K per year. My last two reviews spelled my doom though."

Despite those two, "above-average" reviews, this poster says they were denied a raise one year, then offered a raise of just 1% the following year.

'Legendary little man'
The poster said they eventually complained to then-Publisher Bob Collins ("the legendary little man himself"), and then to Corporate -- "not realizing that this was the exact management style they wanted." The comment concluded: "I was eventually suspended and then fired when I didn't quit."

At least eight more comments were posted that year; in 2009, and then this year. Many were critical of former Press Executive Editor Skip Hidlay.

The most recent comment I found came very early one Wednesday morning last month: May 11. Writing about Hidlay, who had just resigned as publisher of a Kansas daily, they wrote: "Bet it was his choice to resign immediately. Now that's funny. Karma sort of sucks."

That comment was posted shortly before 1 a.m. Just hours later, agents for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Erwin and 15 of his other alleged co-defendants.

[Image: yesterday's Press, Newseum]

40 comments:

  1. This is precisely the entrepreneurial spirit we need at Gannett. Or what Dickey likes to call a proven, results oriented leader.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Do a search on his name on Gannettoid, apparently defunct but still online, and you will find more details involving getting his pension to buy an apartment block with a barber shop in it, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Gannettoid search engine doesn't work properly. Just Google "Christopher Erwin Asbury Park Press" and pick the Gannettoid posts.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Was he still a landscaper? I think he ran
    Chris' Yard Care in Barnegat, NJ but seems to have run into trouble last year because in May he put a lot of landscaping-related equipment up for sale.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm a supporter Jim, but this seems kind of lame. This post has the feel of Channel 2 News getting ahold of John Gotti's TiVo so they can report when John Gotti watched Channel 2 - no real news value but localizing for the sake of localizing.

    And this guy ain't John Gotti. He's a low-level manager who worked for the company 4 years ago, who may or may not have posted on this blog.

    If your goal is to find out if his leaving Gannett was tied to his current troubles, ask the question.

    If it was just to highlight that someone using his handle commented here? Sorry Jim, I don't see the point.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ex employee goes weed whacked.
    Then just whacked.
    This is not uncommon.
    And nothing really related to Gannett.
    Just a news story about drug deals.

    ReplyDelete
  7. No, I think I see where Jim is going on this, and it is certainly an intriguing case. Yes, he's no Gotti, but a quick look at the complaint the DEA filed and some of the posts indicates there is a story here of how Gannett tries to control the lives of its employees.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It is an intricate case and unstated is how Erwin got two physicians who alert to the dangers of narcotics from their training, and all these other people involved in getting phony prescriptions. So going back to the first step, just how did the DEA get involved to unravel all this? Lot of seemingly routine doctor visits in that 45-page DEA complaint, and an awful lot of court-ordered government surveillance for someone who certainly wasn't the dapper don. Wonder how much it cost the government to do all this.

    ReplyDelete
  9. 7:08 Oh yes. Gannett forced him into a life of crime. Poor thing. From hard-working, unblemished employee to menacing drug dealer, all because he didn't get a raise. Ridiculous. If you know anything about addicts, you know his addiction probably played a big role in why he got fired in the first place.

    ReplyDelete
  10. ..... Making sure the popcorn doesn't run out!

    ReplyDelete
  11. 7:23 Interesting that a suggestion Gannett is controlling our lives gets you fired up, but not the intricacies of the case. Hmmm. And I'll have some of that popcorn, if you let me 7:37.

    ReplyDelete
  12. $20K a week? That's nothing, Dubow makes that in less than 5 HOURS!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Perhaps Bob Collins was a P.R. Deltoid, a post corrective adviser who spat in his client's face.

    ReplyDelete
  14. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  15. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  16. What is so noteworthy about the fact that a former Gannett employee who ended up being charged with some crimes posted on this blog from time to time? Just asking.

    ReplyDelete
  17. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  18. One reason for posting this but by no means the only reason -- is that I have an especially loyal readership within the six-newspaper New Jersey Group of dailies.

    Also: a reader asked how close the DEA investigators came to the APP's newsroom. The criminal complaint is silent on that point. The same reader asked if Erwin and Hidlay had a disagreement over a landscaping business. I can't, as yet, answer that question.

    ReplyDelete
  19. For the person defending skip please explain how you could be bob colons pet and be anything but an extension of bob. Unless Bob secretly liked free thinkers.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Jim, the New Jerseyites have proved time and again they are about seven steps back in the evolutionary chain. So why are you catering to them?

    "a disagreement over a landscaping business" -- Brilliant bit of subterfuge there, Jim. No one will see through that secret code.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Gannett could make a fortune, hiring a DOctor.
    Then writing script after script, xanax, prozac, Diazepam, and of course, Damitol.

    Big Pharma meets Big Blarney.

    ReplyDelete
  22. So the point is to imply that Hidlay may have had something to do with the criminal enterprise?

    ReplyDelete
  23. Are these transparent people (person?) who say Ewrin's situation isn't Gannet-related news -- are they the same Gannett executives who are wrecking the news content of their own publications?

    ReplyDelete
  24. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  25. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  26. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  27. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  28. And my conclusion would be, Karma does, indeed, seem to suck. For him and all of Gannett. And also for the cheerful folks posting here.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Oh Geez - now they have to outsource our drug dealers - what will be next....:(

    ReplyDelete
  30. Karma? I gave two former co-workers jobs when they were down and out. Was fired after I complained about the treatment myself and co-workers were subject to by Bob and Skip. The breaking point was when a former worker killed herself months after getting fired over the phone on Christmas Eve. Had nothing to do with raises I just used that as an example. And I didn't go from a 10 an hour community clerk to a 45k important member of the sports desk by being lazy. Can't talk about case for obvious reasons but if you think losing job and friends after being subject to witch hunt by Gannettt scumbags didn't impact me would be foolish. That being said I can assure you my problems with Skip had nothing to do with drugs or landscape work. All to do with his treatment of myself and other people I cared about.
    Also sorry to all the people who lost their jobs. I will be sending Jim stuff regarding this post it will be up to him if he uses it.
    Chris Erwin

    ReplyDelete
  31. Chris, did you lead a drug-trafficking ring? Yes or no?

    Also, what jobs did you give to the former co-workers?

    ReplyDelete
  32. Ok I'm gonna answer that question. A couple of guys worked for my landscape company as well as one of my co-workers sons.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Drug-trafficking ring? Yes or no?

    ReplyDelete
  34. 5:46: Why would he answer that? If he is indeed who that post claims, it would be suicide to say anything about the case since it has not yet gone to trial. He didn't strike me as at all suicidal and I am as stunned as anyone with these developments, which still are unexplained fully IMO.

    ReplyDelete
  35. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  36. not Chris Christie7/01/2011 11:04 PM

    Dear 2:55- re: the following post of yours "Jim, the New Jerseyites have proved time and again they are about seven steps back in the evolutionary chain. So why are you catering to them?"
    I will hazard to guess you are a Jersey wash out. Live in a flat, rectangular state with no personality? Couldn't cut it in the Garden State? I'm betting that's the case.
    As my sainted Irish mother would say, "take a long walk off a short pier."
    And she was from New York, the greatest city in the world and proud to have lived in New Jersey.
    'Nuff said. (take the hint, motor mouth)

    ReplyDelete
  37. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  38. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  39. I knew Chris a long time ago. He got in some trouble as a kid, but it sounds like he got his act together and tried being a regular citizen, worked hard, did a good job. Losing a job you loved because of bullshit politics, i can see where you'd think "what's the point?"

    ReplyDelete
  40. 3:06 thanks I am going to need letters for judge if your comfortable with that drop me a note. If not I understand and take care. Chriser98@yahoo.com
    Thanks again, Chris

    ReplyDelete

Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.