Montgomery County Prison Inmates Face Charges Connected To Drug-Smuggling Scheme

EAGLEVILLE, PA — Two Montgomery County prison inmates and two co-conspirators have been charged with a scheme to smuggle illegal drugs into the Lower Providence-based correctional facility.

The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office on Thursday announced criminal charges against Mason Hall — a man already doing time behind bars for a gunpoint rape — and three co-conspirators.

According to prosecutors, county detectives had received a tip about a possible conspiracy to smuggle illegal drugs into the Montgomery County Correctional Facility using papers soaked with the illegal contraband.

Investigators ultimately uncovered the scheme, which involved two inmates — Mason Hall, 22, and Luis Valazquez, 37 — who worked with two individuals on the outside, Latashia Lucas, 31, of Norristown, and Patrick Perna, 21, also of Norristown, to secretly bring drugs into the county prison.

The investigation found that Hall and Valazquez, who are both housed in the same maximum-security section of the county prison, worked with Perna, who is Hall's friend, and Lucas, who is the girlfriend of Valazquez, to bring illegal drugs into the prison by spraying them with controlled substances.

According to prosecutors, county detectives recovered a handwritten letter from Hall to Perna in late December in which Hall said he planned to smuggle 10 pages per month of the soaked papers into the prison, and then sell the pages at a significant profit.

"Mason Hall and Luis Valazquez are in county prison on some very serious charges and instead of learning their lesson, they are further engaging in illegal activity," District Attorney Kevin Steele said in a statement. "Thankfully, this plan to smuggle drugs into the prison was foiled, but it further shows that these two defendants seem to believe that the law doesn't apply to them, and that they can do as they want out in society and now even in prison."

Hall has been incarcerated since October 2019 after being arrested and charged with a gunpoint rape of a young woman who was jogging in Norristown Farm Park back in 2017.

Hall pleaded guilty this past June to charges of rape, possession of a firearm by a minor, possessing an instrument of crime, simple assault, terroristic threats and recklessly endangering another person, according to the D.A.'s Office.

Hall, of West Norriton Township, is scheduled to be sentenced for those crimes next month.

Hall and Valazquez now face additional charges in relation to the drug smuggling scheme. Those counts include attempted to possession of contraband by an inmate, conspiracy, attempted sale of controlled substance to an inmate, criminal solicitation, and criminal use of a communications facility.

Perna and Lucas are both facing felony charges including conspiracy, attempted sale of a controlled substance to an inmate and criminal use of a communications facility. Both were released after posting bail during their arraignments, according to the D.A.'s Office.

Both Perna and Lucas will face a magisterial district judge for a preliminary hearing next week.