ONE TOWN’S DARK SECRET
Allegations of sex trafficking, drugs shadow attorney
PORTSMOUTH, Ohio – On a clear morning, the four-story Scioto County Courthouse casts its shadow over the smaller brick building across Court Street, where criminal defense attorney Michael Mearan lives and operates his namesake legal practice.
Mearan, 73, is a onetime city councilman
“It wasn’t like you could go to the police. There is no one to tell. Everybody is in each other’s pockets.” Heather Hren, who says she worked as a prostitute for attorney Michael Mearan
who has been a fixture since the 1970s in this small but troubled town along the Ohio River, which separates southern Ohio from northeastern Kentucky.
The area was once dubbed “America’s pill mill,” and when Mearan shuffles over to the courthouse in his rumpled suit, it’s often to represent someone in the relentless grip of opioid addiction.
According to a federal wiretap affida
vit, which was filed under seal with the Southern District of Ohio but obtained by the Enquirer, Mearan is not just a jowly, silver-haired local attorney.
The 80-page affidavit states that Mearan is a prolific sex trafficker who for decades has supplied his young female clients with drugs “in exchange for and as an incentive to participate in acts of prostitution.”
The affidavit – filed in August 2015 by a senior special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration – casts Mearan as a central figure in a drug and sex trafficking ring operating throughout the Midwest.
According to the agent, Mearan is linked to 27 women who worked for him as prostitutes, including one who has been missing since 2013 and another found dead of “multiple traumas” the same year.
The agent said Mearan has been “known to law enforcement” in Portsmouth since the 1970s and has been indirectly tied to multiple FBI investigations into human trafficking, extortion, violent gangs and “White Slave Trafficking.”
In October 2016, the last of eight defendants in the DEA investigation pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute heroin and other drugs.
Mearan was not among those charged. The allegations concerning him remain investigative findings in a sworn affidavit that have not been proved in court.
Rumors about Mearan, sex trafficking and corruption have been something of an open secret in Portsmouth for years.
Those tales gained credibility in December 2017 after an ex-reporter with the Portsmouth Daily Times posted excerpts of the DEA affidavit on a Facebook page.
The lack of follow-through by any investigative body has fueled suspicions in Portsmouth that complicit authorities let Mearan trap women in a cycle of drug abuse and sexual servitude and that outside agencies simply don’t care about the social and economic horrors afflicting forgotten Rust Belt towns such as theirs.
Enquirer reporters picked up where the DEA affidavit ended by spending a year visiting Portsmouth to investigate the allegations concerning Mearan. The effort included interviews with more than 65 individuals and a review of hundreds of documents, including arrest and court records.
Among those interviewed were 10 women who separately shared accounts of working for Mearan as prostitutes at various times over the past two decades. Records show Mearan represented six of the women facing drug charges.
Those women said Mearan promised lenient sentences from judges he knew and parole officers who would ignore probation requirements – if the women were willing to have sex for money.
Mearan, they said, would give them money to feed their drug habits and arranged sexual liaisons with men in Portsmouth, Cincinnati and Columbus and out-of-state trips to New York, New Jersey, Louisiana and Florida.
The women said that they earned anywhere from $200 to $2,000 per encounter and that either the men involved or Mearan himself handled the payment.
‘Totally false’
In two interviews with the Enquirer, Mearan – who was sometimes joking and dismissive and other times angry and combative – consistently denied any suggestion that he had engaged in prostitution or sex trafficking. He said he didn’t even know what a sex trafficker was and asked for a definition.
Mearan said the accusations about him are due to “jealousy” and are “totally false.”
“That affidavit was the product of a couple gals that the FBI tried to set me up,” he said. “This affidavit that you have says that they’ve been investigating me since the ’70s. Now, you think in 50 years they would have maybe come up with something?”
A spokeswoman for the DEA, which does not handle sex trafficking or other offenses unrelated to drugs, said the agency forwarded “information regarding possible corruption and prostitution” stemming from its heroin investigation to the FBI.
“It is unknown what if any investigation was initiated by the FBI as a result of our tip,” DEA spokeswoman Cheryl Davis wrote in an email last year.
Todd Wickerham, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cincinnati office – which includes Portsmouth in its jurisdiction – said he does not know what happened to the DEA investigation after the initial drug convictions.
“I don’t have any other information on this, but if we get credible information on a human trafficking ring, we would absolutely act upon that,” Wickerham said.
Sources with firsthand knowledge told the Enquirer that there is, in fact, an investigation into Mearan by multiple law enforcement agencies. The sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the existence of an active investigation.
Besides Mearan, the women who spoke with the Enquirer collectively named several well-known people from the Portsmouth area who they alleged paid to have sex with them. The list includes former police officers, lawyers, a medical professional, a former high school football star, businessmen and probation officers. The Enquirer is not naming the men unless the allegations against them have been otherwise corroborated.
Almost all of the women interviewed asked to remain anonymous, citing their fears of Mearan’s connections to a corrupt law enforcement system as well as unsolved deaths or disappearances of more than a dozen women in southern Ohio this decade.
During interviews, some of the women cried, trembled or stole furtive glances over their shoulders to make sure they couldn’t be overheard.
“I’m scared. I’m not gonna lie,” one woman wrote in a message to reporters. “I have to live here. I’m on eggshells right now. U don’t know this town.”
Only one of the women, Heather Hren, agreed to have her name used in this story.
Hren, 35, said Mearan arranged for her to have sex with a Cincinnati doctor for $200 – the first time she ever had sex for money.
On another occasion, she said, Mearan brought her to the probation office, where an officer took naked pictures of her in exchange for letting her avoid community service obligations. She said she performed oral sex on a different probation officer.
For almost three years, Mearan “trafficked me to his friends or pimped me out,” Hren said.
“The conditions are ripe for human trafficking. You have drug addiction rampant. You have unemployment. You have poverty. You have a built-in group of folks who are desperate, maybe hopeless, that could be preyed upon.” Shane Tieman Scioto County Prosecutor
Although Mearan hadn’t forced her into prostitution, she said, his law enforcement connections and her addiction left her feeling trapped.
“It wasn’t like you could go to the police,” Hren said. “There is no one to tell. Everybody is in each other’s pockets.”
A town going down
Portsmouth once was an economic rival to cities such as Cincinnati, and in the 1930s, it was home to a National Football League team.
Like other small factory towns in America, Portsmouth’s manufacturing base started collapsing in the 1970s. Its population of less than 20,000 isn’t even half as many people as lived in Portsmouth during its heyday of the 1940s, when it was the country’s shoemaking capital.
Scioto County, where Portsmouth is the county seat, is one of the poorest and least employed regions in the state. In downtown Portsmouth, boards are as prevalent as windows, and former department stores and office buildings house low-end apartments for the elderly. Prostitutes walk the streets day and night near an abandoned shoe factory east of town.
The area has been especially hard hit by drug abuse – mostly prescription painkillers, fentanyl and heroin. The Portsmouth City Health Department recorded nearly 120 deaths from drug overdoses in the past three years.
“The conditions are ripe for human trafficking,” Scioto County Prosecutor Shane Tieman said. “You have drug addiction rampant. You have unemployment. You have poverty. You have a built-in group of folks who are desperate, maybe hopeless, that could be preyed upon.”
According to DEA Senior Special Agent Keith Leighton, that’s exactly what happened.
Leighton’s affidavit in August 2015 sought and received authorization from a U.S. district court judge to set up a wiretap on phones used by Mark Eubanks, a suspected heroin, Oxycodone and steroids dealer.
The affidavit details a sprawling investigation that had been underway for at least 20 months.
Agents installed a GPS tracking device on Eubanks’ gold Hummer H2; surveillance teams followed him and documented the people he met; a hidden camera behind Eubanks’ residence recorded when he came and went; agents sifted through his garbage in search of evidence; and at least four confidential sources provided agents with incriminating information.
The DEA investigation listed 13 “target subjects.”
Eubanks is named the primary target, but the affidavit depicts Mearan as just as important.
Leighton wrote that the investigation “was predicated on the illegal activities” of Mearan, referring to a criminal enterprise as the “EUBANKS/MEARAN organization.”
The affidavit alleges a symbiotic relationship between the duo in which Eubanks supplied drugs and prostitutes to Mearan, and Mearan arranged for the women to have sex for money and represented arrested associates so he could use his connections to secure favorable treatment.
Mearan warned Eubanks about active investigations and gave him the identity of a confidential informant sent to make drug buys from Eubanks, the affidavit says.
The affidavit says that there were more than 200 phone calls and text messages over a one-year period between the men and that a surveillance team watched Eubanks arrive at Mea
ran’s law office one day, toting a thermos that agents suspected concealed $1,600 in cash.
Federal prosecutors with the Southern District of Ohio indicted Eubanks in October 2015, and he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute heroin.
He was sentenced to 150 months in federal prison. Eubanks, 37, declined to comment when reached at the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia.
‘I’m a pretty decent lawyer’
Mearan’s law office is on the ground floor, adjacent to a bedroom separated only by a sliding door. His bedroom used to be on the second floor, but the stairs make the trek too arduous.
During two separate interviews, his phone rarely stopped ringing. His secretary shuttled in and out to deliver paperwork for him to address. At least three potential clients knocked on his door in search of help. A pack of mixed-breed rescue dogs roamed about in search of attention. And his adult daughter yelled at reporters to leave her father alone.
Mearan, who has no known criminal history, said the details in the DEA affidavit shouldn’t be taken seriously because agents relied on confidential informants looking to cut deals to reduce their own sentences.
“I make my living as a lawyer, and I think I’m a pretty decent lawyer,” Mearan said. “I’m not going to stoop to defending myself against these people.”
The affidavit acknowledges that some of the informants cooperated in exchange for consideration on drug charges, though it says the sources have “provided reliable intelligence information to law enforcement authorities in the past.”
Three of the four confidential sources in the investigation are associated with Mearan, not Eubanks, according to the affidavit. Most of the sex trafficking allegations concerning Mearan came from either those sources or more than two dozen unnamed women who are not specified as confidential sources.
The affidavit says information about Mearan was obtained during federal investigations and from “numerous complaints” the FBI compiled about him.
One unnamed source – identified as a former prostitute of Mearan’s – said he would give her $100 every time she introduced him to a new woman. Another confidential source said Mearan arranged a trip for her and a second woman to fly to Palm Beach, Florida, in 2014 to have sex with two people from New Jersey.
Airline records, photos and telephone records corroborated the Florida rendezvous, according to the affidavit.
Some of the accusations against Mearan aren’t attributed to a source but are presented in the affidavit as fact, with no qualifications about their veracity.
For example, the affidavit flatly states that Daren Biggs, one of the 13 targets of the investigation, “has been supplied with prostitutes in the past” by Mearan. Biggs, who was not charged in the case, could not be reached for comment.
Lindsey Porter, another target who was not charged, “used to work for Mearan as a prostitute,” according to the affidavit.
Porter declined to comment when reached in prison, where she is serving a sentence on charges unrelated to the DEA investigation.
‘There used to be a code’
The affidavit cites two Portsmouth individuals who are not named as targets of the DEA investigation but who are implicated as Mearan’s associates.
Frederick Brisker, 68, a former Scioto County high school football star who became a well-known financial adviser in Portsmouth, allegedly helped Mearan coordinate the sex trafficking operation.
“The prostitutes are provided drugs and paid cash for their services by Mearan and their dates with clients are scheduled by Mearan and Brisker,” the affidavit says.
Brisker has no known criminal record. The financial firm that employed Brisker fired him in March 2018 for allegedly forging the signature of another insurance agent. Brisker has state and federal tax liens that, as of January, total more than $566,000.
Brisker declined to comment. In an email, he referred questions to Mearan, whom he called his personal attorney.
“I guess Fred Brisker’s biggest vice is that he’s a friend of mine,” Mearan said. “Fred would give you the shirt off his back.”
The other individual is not named in the affidavit but is referred to several times as a Portsmouth judge “in collusion” with Mearan. The document alleges that Mearan provided the judge with women, according to information “obtained through numerous interviews, including interviews with former prostitutes.”
The women interviewed by the Enquirer said the judge in question is former Common Pleas Court Judge William Marshall.
Marshall, 62, denied any involvement with drugs or prostitutes.
“Are you serious? I would never do anything like that,” he said.
He declined to comment further. Marshall retired last year amid controversy after spending 16 years on the state bench.
State officials found he improperly confronted Ohio State Highway Patrol officers who had written his daughter a speeding ticket.
Last month, the state Supreme Court suspended Marshall from practicing law for six months because of the incident.
Marshall explained his behavior to a county prosecutor by saying, “I didn’t like the trooper. He didn’t listen to me. There used to be a code in this county – I’m a judge, and he shouldn’t have written my daughter” a ticket.
The ‘No. 1 girl’
The manufacturer of Oxycontin – the brand name of a powerful opioid painkiller – recommends an introductory dose of 10 mg every 12 hours.
Hren said that in 2006, at the peak of her addiction, she was taking 160 mg a day.
She said she was desperate for cash when a friend suggested she could make some money if she was willing to “do a little dance for” Mearan.
Hren said she was hesitant at first but gave in. “When you’re needing extra money for drugs, you get to a point where definitely you want to do whatever it takes,” she said.
Hren said she quickly became Mearan’s “No. 1 girl” as he arranged for her to have sex with numerous men, including Brisker. “I was made to feel like I had to do those things and that there wasn’t really any getting out,” she said.
If she left, she said, she was worried Mearan might use his connections to have her sent to prison – or worse.
Hren said she was scared that she “would disappear,” or that “they would kill me and get rid of me and that would be the end of it.”
After nearly three years, Hren said, she was able to escape when she secured a few thousand dollars in a workers’ compensation settlement related to an injury in a medical office job.
She used the money to relocate to another city in Ohio and said she is working to stay sober.
She has a job in the medical field and is raising two children.
“I’m one of the few who got away,” she said. “I’ll make sure that I have a roof over our head and we don’t have to depend on a nasty sugar daddy to pay for it.”
‘Men who give money’
Like Hren, many of the women who spoke with the Enquirer pointed to the case of Megan Lancaster, a prostitute who disappeared from Portsmouth in April 2013. Police found her white Ford Mustang, her wallet left on the front seat, outside the Rally’s fast food restaurant.
The DEA affidavit refers to Lancaster’s disappearance.
Lancaster’s sister-in-law, Kadie Lancaster, said she understands why women in Portsmouth are afraid to talk.
“You could be the next Megan Lancaster if they think that you know something that you could tell,” she said.
Kadie Lancaster dug into what happened to Megan. She keeps one of Megan’s bras in the freezer, just in case it has DNA evidence, and compiled a 5inch thick binder filled with documents that she considers potential clues.
The binder contains 246 different names and phone numbers that Megan kept in color-coded notebooks. The entries include notations such as “dance for” and “men who give money.” Mearan’s name and number are there, along with both notations.
Kadie Lancaster said she called nearly every phone number in the notebooks. One man who answered was a retired police captain, she said.
“He said he didn’t know what I was talking about,” Kadie said. “Then why did she have his number, and it was the right number, and he answered?”
Portsmouth Police Chief Robert Ware declined to comment on “the existence or status of any possible investigation.”
If any Portsmouth police were involved, Ware said, it would be “disappointing, because all that does is bring a scar to law enforcement.”
Scioto County Sheriff Marty Donini said it’s the scope of the activity described in the affidavit, not the clout of the people who may be involved, that would hamper an investigation by authorities.
“If it’s that big a deal, and it’s that farreaching – out of state, out of country or whatever – I just don’t think we have the ability, the manpower or resources to do it,” Donini said.