TRION, Georgia (CNN) -- Story Highlights:
-10 people, including grandpa, son and grandson, convicted on serious drug charges
-83-year-old former moonshiner gets 20 years; son who led operation gets 9 years
-Attorney: "If the father got a longer sentence, it's because he's a lousy father"
-Authorities say case is a microcosm of what's happening across rural America
It was May 2005. The couple brought along methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana to help pass the time on the long journey.
At that moment, Detective Rob Rumble had no clue that the traffic stop he was about to make would launch a years-long drug investigation stretching more than 2,000 miles, from the remote mountains of northwest Georgia all the way down to Mexico.
The investigation showed how an 83-year-old grandfather adapted to the times, morphing from old school bootlegging to dealing Mexican dope. His son acted as the ringleader of the operation. His grandson was tied in too, authorities say.
"I've seen it all. Nothing surprises me," said Rumble, a drug investigator for the district attorney's office in east-central Oklahoma.
After making that traffic stop, Rumble persuaded the nervous, lanky driver from Georgia to work with authorities and tell everything he knew. Investigators were led to a sleepy pocket of Georgia with scenic mountain views where people wave to strangers from their cars and where some homes still fly the Confederate flag.
It's the last place one might expect drugs from Mexico. But the demand for drugs is reaching even the most remote corners of America.
Their story has all the intrigue of a classic Southern novel -- three generations of a family business on the wrong side of the law, complete with an old fashioned family feud.
"When they're in that type of business, there's a reckoning day -- and apparently this is it," said Benny Perry, the 78-year-old mayor of Trion, Georgia, one of the towns where the family was operating.
Perry is a barrel-chested man and speaks in a welcoming Southern accent. "I'll say this, I was completely surprised," he said. "I felt like we had a problem here, but I wouldn't have thought it was originating in Mexico and coming here."
The drugs, mostly marijuana, were trucked from Mexico through California and Arizona and then distributed across five counties in Georgia and one in Tennessee, authorities say. They were hidden in just about anything -- furniture, roofs of big-rigs and tire wells. Once the shipments arrived, the dope was put in 50-caliber ammunition cans and buried in the woods, where buyers would pick up the stash and leave behind thousands in cash, authorities say.
At the heart of the operation was 46-year-old Michael Leon Smith, who authorities say became one of the richest men in Chattooga County, population 25,000, as he laundered his drug money by buying up dozens of pieces of property. One tract of land sits on Old Justice Road, an ironic name considering the law finally caught up with him.
Smith's 83-year-old father, Paul Leon Faulkner, was also busted. Eight others, including Faulkner's grandson (Smith's nephew), pleaded guilty to an array of charges related to the drug ring. The drugs mostly involved marijuana, but methamphetamine and cocaine were also part of the smuggling operation, authorities say.
"We love it when somebody says they can't be caught," said Del Thomasson, a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who worked the case.
Faulkner, who is suffering from cancer, was handed a 20-year sentence last month and is to head to prison in August. "Twenty years, that is a death sentence," said Giles Jones, Faulkner's attorney, adding that he has appealed the sentence.
He said Faulkner was a "full-time mountain shiner" who could talk moonshine until he was "blue in the face," but knew little about the Mexican marijuana operation. Jones said the old man's son "threw his ass under the bus" to save himself.
"It's a situation where I guess you're just looking out for yourself. It's every day as every day, man," said Jones.
Not so fast, said Cathy Alterman, the defense attorney for Smith, Faulkner's son.
"Michael didn't throw his father under the bus. His father threw Michael down the drain when he was 16 years old," Alterman said. "If the father got a longer sentence, it's because he's a lousy father. ... He was never there for his son, except to be a bad example."
Smith is serving a nine-year sentence in federal prison in Montgomery, Alabama. Faulkner's grandson is also serving a nine-year sentence. There is no parole in the federal system.
Alterman said the sentences are excessive for people involved in dealing marijuana, a substance she says should be legalized. (REST OF ARTICLE)
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