Detroit man called "lynchpin" of six-state fentanyl pipeline pleads guilty to 16 felonies
A Detroit man will spend at least 24 years in an Ohio prison over a fentanyl operation that reached six states, prosecutors said.
Anton Glynn Miles, 37, pleaded guilty to 16 felony charges, including trafficking and possession of criminal tools tied to the rental vehicles used to move narcotics across state lines, the Scioto County (Ohio) prosecutor's office said on Tuesday. A negotiated plea agreement set an aggregate sentence of 30 to 35½ years, and Miles will not be eligible for parole until he has served at least 24 of them, the office said.
The prosecutor's office said the case took apart a "large-scale interstate drug pipeline," citing known or suspected distribution connections in Detroit, Indianapolis and Chicago along with southern Ohio, northern Kentucky and West Virginia. Detectives worked the case for more than three years.
The prosecutor's office described the outcome as one of the most significant in Scioto County history.
Traffic stops led to the investigation
The investigation began with the first in a series of traffic stops made by a veteran Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper in Scioto County, which sits along the Ohio-Kentucky border.
In January 2022, the trooper stopped a 2021 Ford Escape driven by a 22-year-old woman. Authorities later determined Miles had rented the vehicle two days earlier, the prosecutor's office said, and a box concealed in the undercarriage held about 600 grams of fentanyl.
In April 2022, the trooper stopped a 2020 Nissan Rogue rented out of Livonia, Michigan, with two women inside. A police K-9 search turned up about 405 grams of fentanyl hidden in clothing on the back seat.
And in August 2022, the trooper noticed two vehicles traveling together and signaled both to stop. One was a van driven by a Detroit man who had accepted a rideshare request; a K-9 search found 237 grams of narcotics packed into a coffee can. Miles was driving the other vehicle, a rented Chevrolet Suburban.
Scioto County Prosecutor Shane Tieman credited the trooper, identified as Trooper Lewis, with contributing significantly to the investigation through his "vigilance and interdiction expertise."
After those seizures, prosecutors said, Miles rerouted his operation to run from Detroit through Indianapolis to northern Kentucky, steering clear of the trooper entirely.
Scioto County authorities then brought in the Southern Ohio Drug Task Force.
Grand jury indictment
It took roughly three years to assemble the evidence for a grand jury showing Miles was the "lynchpin" behind the seizures, the prosecutor's office said. The grand jury returned a 34-count indictment.
Miles was one of two people arrested in November 2025 in Grayson, Kentucky, where authorities seized more than 1,000 grams of suspected fentanyl that had just been delivered to a local contact.
Law enforcement agencies from Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana assisted the Ohio State Highway Patrol, as did the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Detroit has been the starting point in other multistate trafficking cases. In April, a Detroit man was sentenced to 22½ years in federal prison over a fentanyl scheme that ran from Michigan to Indiana, and in March, a Michigan man was sentenced to probation in a case involving 19 people charged across Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
