PORTLAND – A Rumford woman who police say stuffed baggies of cocaine and fentanyl into her pants during a traffic stop in Lewiston will remain in jail until she can be admitted to a drug rehabilitation center, a judge ruled Thursday.
Kristi Harting, 46, appeared in U.S. District Court wearing a Strafford County (New Hampshire) jail suit and was accompanied by federal marshals.
Harting had hoped to be released from prison and return to her apartment in Rumford until a bed became available at a rehab center.
But US judge Karen Frink Wolf rejected Harting’s request. One of the reasons she gave was that Harting had admitted to police that he had bought and resold drugs.
“This is a big deal,” Wolf said.
Harting is charged with distribution and possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to one million dollars.
On July 6, Lewiston police stopped a 2017 Audi sedan after officers noticed that the car’s license plates did not match its registration, according to an affidavit from FBI special agent Kurt Ormberg.
Officers reported seeing a glass pipe with white residue in the recess of one of the car doors, Ormberg wrote.
A dog called to the scene discovered drugs in the car.
Officers searched the car for drugs and searched Harting and her passenger for weapons.
An officer noticed a “bulge” in Harting’s pants and asked what it was.
“At this point, Harting handed the officer two bags of powder that the officer suspected were cocaine and fentanyl,” Ormberg wrote.
Further analysis revealed that the bags contained about 36 grams of cocaine and 103 grams of fentanyl, he wrote.
In a police interview, Harting said that when she was stopped, her passenger gave her the two bags of drugs and told her to hide them, so she stuffed them in her pants, Ormberg wrote.
Harting also said she “regularly worked as an errand boy for drug dealers, transporting drugs and money between Maine and Massachusetts and paying for the distribution of quantities of cocaine, which she both consumed and resold,” Ormberg wrote.
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