The story of how five Florida teenagers built a mighty drug empire dealing oxycodone is rife with sex, drugs and violence.
The teens – brothers Lance, Landon and Larry Barabas, Richard Sullivan and Douglas Dodd – began selling oxycodone in 2006 and at one point brought in $40,000 per month through orders from places as far-flung as Alaska.
The multimillion-dollar operation, known by police as the Barabas Criminal Enterprise, was brought down by an informant in 2009 and all five served time behind bars for their role.
Now Dodd, who was released from jail in 2014, has written a book with Matthew B Cox called ‘Generation Oxy: From High School Wrestlers to Pain Pill Kingpins’. The book has been seen by the New York Post.
Douglas Dodd (second from right) has co-written a memoir about the rise and fall of a multimillion-dollar oxycodone-dealing operation managed by himself, Richard Sullivan (left), Landon Barabas (second from left), Lance Barabas (right) and Larry Barabas (not pictured)
Dodd writes of the group’s hard-partying ways: ‘Lance spread out one hundred grand on his king-sized bed and let a dozen drunken sorority girls snap photos of each other rolling around in cash.’ They were teenagers in high school when they began the empire
Dodd met Lance, Landon and Sullivan on his first day at Hudson High School in Hudson, Florida pack in 2003.
He writes that he grew up in a trailer park, and described his new friends as ‘a bunch of blond-haired, blue-eyed, wisecracking rich kids surrounded by a pool of the underprivileged’.
The friends would play sports, smoke weed and drink hard alcohol at weekend parties held in trailers, Dodd writes. They were on the school’s wrestling team.
‘It was more like a scene from “Fight Club” than your typical high-school party,’ Dodd writes. ‘There were always a few real brawls.’
Fight Club is a book that was later turned into a film that details the exploits of men who resort to violence as a means of release.
After an arrest for marijuana possession in February 2006, Dodd, then 17, began using oxycodone with his cousin.
The drug only remains in one’s system for a few days, rather than weeks, meaning that he could take it and still pass his weekly drug tests.
‘The warm soothing sensation of the oxycodone rushing through my veins, relaxing and loosening every muscle fiber within my body, was overwhelmingly euphoric,’ he writes.
Pictured is Landon Barabas. The operation began in 2006 and ended in 2009 after an informant revealed information about the operation, by then known by authorities as the Barabas Criminal Enterprise, to the DEA
Pictured are OxyContin pills. OxyContin is one of the forms in which OxyCodone is available. Justin Knox, who ended up informing the DEA of the operation, described the drug as ‘hillbilly heroin’
He writes that he quickly began dealing and found a supplier via a family member.
His first order was 100 pills, through which he hoped to make a profit of about 56 percent.
He quickly sold out and writes that he was being supplied more than 2,000 pills a month.
With his fast cash, he made purchases such as a new car.
Dodd’s friends, including Larry Barabas, joined in and the operation soon brought in $40,000 per month.
After graduating high school in June 2007, Dodd and Lance attended the same college, Pasco-Hernando State.
Landon, meanwhile, went to Cumberland University in Tennessee, where he recruited fellow students to help deal oxycodone. One such student was Justin Knox.
Knox, Dodd writes, referred to oxycodone as ‘hillbilly heroin’.
Dodd writes that Lance in particular went wild with the success of the operation, ‘flashing his Block .45 every chance he got’.
Describing a party thrown by Lance in 2009, Dodd writes: ‘Lance spread out one hundred grand on his king-sized bed and let a dozen drunken sorority girls snap photos of each other rolling around in cash.’
Dodd writes in ‘Generation Oxy: From High School Wrestlers to Pain Pill Kingpins’: ‘The warm soothing sensation of the oxycodone rushing through my veins, relaxing and loosening every muscle fiber within my body, was overwhelmingly euphoric’
Dodd, pictured more recently, is currently studying for an associate’s degree at Pasco-Hernando State College
The book was released this October and is available for order on Amazon
At one point, per Dodd’s account, Lance even wanted to get a license plate that read ‘OXY-80S’.
Eventually, Knox was caught selling and was arrested in October 2009. He informed the DEA of what by then was infamously known as the Barabas Criminal Enterprise.
All five teenagers – by then, men – were arrested. Lance came to be identified as the ringleader, and is currently serving a 15-year sentence.
Dodd was sentenced to six years and eight months and became a free man again in October 2014.
He is working towards his associate’s degree at Pasco-Hernando State.
The book’s Amazon summary notes: ‘Generation Oxy is the story of a group of friends―clean cut, all-American high school kids―who stumbled into the Sunshine State’s murky underworld of illegal pill mills and corrupt doctors.’
- Generation Oxy: From High School Wrestlers to Pain Pill Kingpins is available to order from Amazon