Penn State's Infamous Fraternity Drug Ring Reportedly Sold Only $124,000 Worth of Cocaine Over Multiple Years

$124,000 is a lot of money. At least it is for me. A quick $124,000 come up would definitely make my life easier right now. But depending on who you are... where you come from... and what you're comparing it to... you can spin $124k worth of cocaine in A LOT of different ways. 

And ever since this Penn State story broke, these frat guys have been given the "drug kingpin" label. With all due respect to Pledgesco Escobar and his Delta Epsilon brothers... I just don't think $124,000 in cocaine makes you a kingpin. Not even close.

For starters, whatever amount of money the authorities claim a drug bust is worth, in reality, it's maybe half of that. This frat reportedly moved $124,000 worth of cocaine. All the headlines say Delta Epsilon were moving KILOS of cocaine through a vast network of dealers all across Happy Valley. But let's do the math. I would personally be shocked if the police valued Delta Epsilon's cocaine at any less than $80 per gram. But to be safe, let's say they priced it at $50. Which is about what I would buy it for 10 years ago at a MAC school in Ohio. I can't imagine the drug market in Penn State is too much different.

If we're calling it $50/gram, then $124,000 would be 2,480 grams. Which is a little under 2.5 kilos.

To make a comparison, have you seen how much drugs people are smuggling on commercial flights nowadays? The stupidest, drunkest, most irresponsible losers you'll ever find on Instagram are moving MILLIONS of dollars worth of marijuana on commercial flights.

I did the math on that Vance Randolph guy's "$3M worth of marijuana". In order for the polite to get to $3M based on what they caught him with, he would have had to be selling those drugs exclusively to high school kids willing to pay triple because they have their parent's money and don't know any better. This is from a blog I wrote about that kid last summer. 

I know every state and municipality handles things differently. But if all they can pin on the Penn State kids is $124,000 worth of coke… I just don't think we should be comparing them to Pablo Escobar. They were selling blow on Penn State's campus. They probably asked pledges who were already buying coke from them to help out. And the pledges were probably happy to do it, because hell… it probably meant some free cocaine. 

I'm speculating a lot here, but based on the way they were talking about this "drug ring", I was expecting it to be millions. In reality, they were probably just some regular ass college coke dealers who got too many untrustworthy people involved. Then someone snitched I don't mean to defend what they're doing, or act like they don't deserve to be in trouble, but I gotta think there are college drug dealers moving this volume of cocaine at every campus across the United States. 

What it sounds like to me (and again, this is a lot of speculation) is these frat guys/drug ring leaders fancied themselves a pretty big fucking deal. They might have been eager to get more people involved, because they probably liked the idea of having a real full scale operation. And in hindsight, they might be thinking "Damn… I wish we didn't trust those freshman just because they had steady hands, and were down to do lines with us."

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TRIB – To maintain secrecy, the suspected operation depended on pledges and fraternity brothers to observe an unspoken code of silence. 

According to court documents, Robinson, a former finance student, converted a basement boiler room of the Delta Upsilon fraternity house into a processing hub for a cocaine operation, where he enlisted fraternity pledges and fellow brothers to chop, weigh and package the drug. …

Robinson served as the “new member educator” for Delta Upsilon’s spring and fall pledge classes in 2024, according to the grand jury presentment, whose role is “to act as the mediator between the pledges and the pledge masters when there are disputes,” the presentment says.

“Based upon testimony, it was clear that Robinson used his position as pledge educator to recruit pledges to assist him in his drug operation,” the grand jury presentment says. 

Each pledge class has “pledge masters,” who are fraternity brothers assigned to supervise the pledge class. …

If pledges don’t complete their assigned tasks correctly, a pledge master decides the punishment, according to Robinson’s grand jury testimony. 

“Whether the task is done correctly is determined by the fraternity brother who requested the task,” the presentment says. …

According to C.W.’s grand jury testimony, he was contacted by Robinson during the pledge process and asked to “get two other pledges who were trustworthy.

“Robinson directed all three pledges … to hold out their hands. If their hands were steady, they were allowed to continue to assist Robinson, although they did not know the task they were being asked to do,” the presentment says.

A pledge, L.H. didn’t pass and was “rejected from assisting Robinson,” the presentment says. Those who passed the “steady hand test” were directed to “go online and print three copies of a non-disclosure form.”

Robinson had the pledges sign the forms and then “tore them up and threw them away,” the presentment says.

“C.W. was instructed to retrieve a footlocker from the trunk of Robinson’s car … the footlocker contained goggles, masks, gloves, Pyrex dishes, a digital scale and half-gram zip-lock baggies,” the presentment says. “Robinson then placed a brick-like amount of cocaine on the folding table. One of the pledges shredded the cocaine while Robinson added creatine to the cocaine.

Am I crazy to think that really just sounds like a couple of frat bros who really liked selling cocaine. A couple of guys who had a certain amount of power over a certain amount of younger pledges based on their status in the fraternity. Then they took things WAY too far because… I mean… I'm sure it is kinda fun getting to play drug dealer to a bunch of white Penn State kids in your early 20's. 

But hell… whatever the real story is, it was juicy enough for these guys to get a Netflix show out of it.

That $124,000 number though… kinda puts a damper on what I thought these kids had going on in the basement of their frat house. They were selling drugs on Venmo for christ sakes. You can only build am "empire" so big when you're that phenomenally careless. Which at this point is probably a good thing for them. Now would be a great time for people to realize their drug dealing operation wasn't at all what the internet made it out to be. For their sake, I kind hope I'm right.