INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana announced Monday that they’ve secured prison sentences for 11 convicted felons who illegally possessed firearms.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana, 23 unlawfully held guns were removed from the streets of Indianapolis and Evansville between January and February.

Each prosecution stemmed from separate investigations.

“When we remove firearms from people with violent criminal histories, we are preventing future shootings, protecting families, and strengthening the safety of every neighborhood in this district. These convictions send a clear message: if you are a prohibited person and you pick up a gun, federal prison will follow,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana Tom Wood said in a release.

According to the release, these cases part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations, and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime.

The following people were convicted:

• 33-year-old Lanel Wimberly of Evansville.
• 46-year-old Christopher Jackson of Indianapolis.
• 32-year-old Zachary Daniels of Indianapolis.
• 56-year-old Darrin Powell of Evansville.
• 21-year-old James Montgomery Jr. of Indianapolis.
• 32-year-old Anthony Bricest of Jeffersonville.
• 31-year-old Jake Fucks of Evansville.
• 27-year-old Antonio Harrell of Evansville.
• 24-year-old Cornelius Cooper III of Carlisle.
• 40-year-old Samuel Paige of Indianapolis.
• 45-year-old Thomas Kirsch of Reed, Ky.

In a case that calls to mind the plot of the fictional crime show Breaking Bad, a former US educator with the last name White is faced with charges of illicitly dealing methamphetamine.

A 12 March statement from police in the town of Clarksville, Indiana, said officers searched the home of Alan Jay White five days earlier, finding 78 grams of suspected meth and counterfeit cash. They contended that the amount was too big for personal use, booking him with illegally peddling meth, counterfeiting and possessing drug paraphernalia, the agency’s statement added.

Clarksville police said they had been targeting White, 59, “for years”, accusing him of being a drug dealer whose nickname was “the professor” because he had once worked as a college dean.

The news outlet WAVE in nearby Louisville, Kentucky, interviewed White after he was released from jail pending the outcome of the case without being required to post a bond. White didn’t dispute that there were drugs which police found in his home – but maintained they did not belong to him.

“They didn’t find stacks of monies,” White remarked. “They did not find stacks of dope. They did not find guns.”

White noted how his arrest did not yield the kind of pictures often published by police departments after drug busts in which money, weapons and narcotics are laid out atop tables.

“If they’ve literally been following me for years, as they said, somebody’s got to answer to their boss about what an incredible waste of resources it was,” White continued. “I’m saying if they found anything, it was maybe $250 worth, and it wasn’t even mine.”

Regardless, White’s arrest immediately prompted the police department pursuing him to reference Breaking Bad, whose Emmy-winning run was from 2008 to 2013.

“He’s definitely no Walter White,” said a statement attributed to Clarksville’s police chief, Nathan Walls, explicitly referencing Breaking Bad’s protagonist: a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with cancer, starts to distribute crystal meth to secure his family’s financial future, and violently clashes with drug cartel goons.

Media reports online show Alan White was appointed as the dean of Indiana University Southeast (IUS)’s school of business in 2007. He had previously been an associate or assistant professor of finance at IUS and Kenutcky’s Murray State University.

White’s page on the LinkedIn platform said his time as the dean at IUS’s business school ended in 2017, the year after Louisville’s Courier Journal reported that local police arrested him upon allegedly finding him passed out in the driver’s seat of a car and in possession of drugs.

His LinkedIn page indicates he is semi-retired from education and self-employed in home renovation and repair.