A man praised for buying $540 worth of Girl Scout cookies from a South Carolina troop last week to get the girls out of the cold was arrested by the DEA on Tuesday for alleged drug distribution and fraud, local news station Fox Carolina reports. Detric McGowan reportedly bought $40 of cookies in front of a Mauldin grocery store on Friday, then came back later and bought the rest of the Girl Scouts' stock so they could get out of the cold and rainy weather. The girls selling the cookies posted a photo of the man on Facebook, which was subsequently shared thousands of times. Just days after McGowan went viral as a “good samaritan,” however, he was reportedly listed in a 21-page indictment and charged with “conspiracy to distribute heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl; racketeering; selling and distributing controlled substances; conspiracy to defraud the United States,” and other charges. McGowan—whose nickname was “Fat”—allegedly conspired to “import heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl” from Mexico in September 2018 and attempted to transport $1 million outside of the U.S.
A DEA spokesman told the news station McGowan's cookie purchase was completely unrelated to the crimes he allegedly committed. “Nobody was hurt. Nobody was threatened. We had no reason to believe that this man was anything other than one of our valuable customers that is helping Girl Scouts power awesome experiences through the Girl Scout Cookie Program,” Karen Kelly, VP of Marketing for Girl Scouts of South Carolina, said in a statement. “This is now in the hands of law enforcement and of course we will cooperate with authorities.”
Read it at Fox Carolina
