Massachusetts high school dean charged with cocaine trafficking

Pittsfield High School’s dean of students has been arrested and charged with running a large-scale cocaine-trafficking operation in western Massachusetts.

Lavante Wiggins, 30, was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. He was arrested along with a second Pittsfield man, Theodore “Monty” Warren, 42, who the feds say worked for Wiggins as a drug dealer.

Federal investigators built their case through a cooperating witness whose alleged purchases through Wiggins and Warren were documented in a series of text messages.

“He’s finishing up his training gang, I don’t think it’s going to take that long,” Wiggins texted the cooperating witness on April 29 to explain why Warren, his drug dealer, was taking so long to get to a agreed understanding.

The witness wanted to buy 500 grams of cocaine and pay off a $15,000 debt to Wiggins, according to an affidavit filed in support of the charges by J. Todd Briggs, a Berkshire County sheriff’s deputy and member of a task force FBI investigating drug trafficking.

The client Wiggins was texting allegedly racked up about $34,000 in drug debt, an amount that continued to grow as Wiggins and Warren continued to feed the client’s habit.

Both men appeared in federal court in Springfield on Tuesday. Prosecutors did not request an arrest. Magistrate Judge Katherine A. Robertson ordered that both men, while released, have no contact with victims, witnesses or each other except in the presence of their attorneys. She also ordered Warren to submit to GPS monitoring, according to the case file.