A Bolivar man with a long criminal history pleaded guilty yesterday to attempted contraband of a controlled substance and conspiracy to the same offense for his role in a drug-smuggling scheme while he was incarcerated at the Westmoreland County Prison last year.
28-year-old David Lee McGinnis also pleaded guilty to 16 other offenses, 12 of them felonies involving intimidation or retaliation against witnesses, and four of them misdemeanors for hindering apprehension and impersonating a public servant.
McGinnis was one of six people charged in the plot to smuggle suboxone and synthetic marijuana into the prison. It was a convoluted scheme in which McGinnis arranged for his mother, 50-year-old Denise McGinnis, and his girlfriend, 28-year-old Matraca Vrana of Northern Cambria, to hide drugs in a district judge’s office bathroom to be picked up by Joshua Petrill, McGinnis’s former cellmate. Police uncovered the plot and stopped it.
McGinnis was also involved in a 2019 case in Indiana County, when he and another man fought during a robbery attempt in the middle of a drug deal in Burrell Township. Vrana was involved in that case also. The case never went to trial in Indiana County Court.
Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio sentenced McGinnis yesterday to two to four years in prison and five years probation. The case also involved guilty pleas in drug cases from 2017 and 2019.
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