Mother-son duo sent to federal prison for crack, fentanyl trafficking
Sep. 23—CONCORD — A mother and son who ran a family business selling fentanyl and crack cocaine from their Manchester home will spend several years in prison, federal prosecutors announced.
The son — Jovan Callaghan, 25 — was sent to prison for five years earlier this week, a sentence his lawyer had recommended that U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty issue.
McCafferty sentenced Chrystal Callaghan, 43 Jovan's mother, to 4 1/2 years in federal prison this past July.
According to court records, the two operated a drug trafficking operation through most of last year that involved automobile trips to New York state to obtain crack cocaine to sell in New Hampshire.
They told one undercover buyer that someone would always be at their 535 Granite St. home to sell drugs. And they kept up the operation even after three traffic stops and one home search led to police confiscating the drugs without making any arrests.
John Farley, the top federal prosecutor in New Hampshire, said police will often take drugs off the street but let suspects go. There can be a number of reasons: to test the suspected drugs or to build a stronger case.
"Knocking off a single individual is sometimes not as effective (as continuing an investigation)," Farley said.
The final search took place at the Granite Street home in December 2020, when authorities found a kilogram of fentanyl and a 9mm handgun in the apartment and arrested the mother and son.
"(Chrystal Callaghan) involved her adult son in drug trafficking and transported narcotics through multiple states with her minor daughter," the lead prosecutor in the case, Jennifer Davis, wrote in a sentencing memorandum. She sought 108 months in prison for the mother and 80 months for the son.
Lawyers for both the Callaghans describe hard lives that eventually led to drug trafficking.
Chrystal suffered abuse as a child and was in abusive relationships as an adult. Drug use and mental health deficits eventually led to drug selling, wrote her lawyer, Benjamin Faulkner.
"His upbringing and family life never gave him a chance," lawyer Donald Kennedy wrote.
"His father went to prison when he was young and was never involved with his family. His mother was actually involved in this conspiracy longer than he was and brought him into the fold."
But prosecutor Davis wrote that many criminal defendants suffer from difficult childhoods and drug addiction, and nothing in their backgrounds warrant a departure from her recommended sentences.
She also noted that Chrystal was in drug treatment just a year before her arrest.
In prepared remarks, Farley said the cases show how federal prosecutors and local police act to identify and prosecutor those who traffic fentanyl, crack cocaine and other hard drugs.
