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YouTube screengrab WJXT showing FBI agents entering home as part of massive meth-drug bust Operation Ghost Busted. Inset: Booking photo for Rachael P. Byrd.
A woman who helped traffic several kilos of methamphetamine in and out of a Georgia prison with the aid of her inmate boyfriend and a corrupt guard was sentenced to spend 27 years in federal prison — more time than she has yet been alive.
Rachael P. Byrd, 26, also known as “Byrd is the Word” or “Rachel NeSmith” is one of 76 conspirators that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in Georgia have prosecuted as a part of Operation Ghost Busted, a massive drug sting unveiled publicly for the first time last January, according to a statement from the Justice Department.
The case is officially known on the docket in Georgia as U.S. v. Alvarez et al and it began in 2022. Prosecutors said Byrd, a resident of Waverly, Georgia, served as a pipeline from Atlanta meth suppliers outside of jail to a willing prison guard who was also friendly with her boyfriend and the leader of the white supremacist prison gang, the Ghost Face Gangsters.
Along with meth, the conspirators distributed huge amounts of fentanyl, heroin and alprazolam, also known as Xanax.
Authorities said the network wasn’t limited to the Ghost Face Gangsters alone but involved members of the Aryan Brotherhood, the Bloods and a group known as Gangster Disciples, too.
Pulling in drugs from the streets of Gwynn County, Georgia, prosecutors said Byrd transported “multiple kilos of meth” as “an outside link” to her inmate lover, James NeSmith.
NeSmith was already serving life for the murder of an inmate at Telfair State Prison when he was busted for his role in the trafficking conspiracy. When announcing that NeSmith was pleading guilty to his role in distributing the drugs, prosecutors noted NeSmith’s mother and sister were also charged.
As for NeSmith’s girlfriend, U.S. Attorney Jill Steinberg said of Byrd: “She fueled meth addiction in communities throughout south Georgia, and this substantial sentence holds her accountable.”
Byrd and the 75 others indicted as part of Operation Ghost Busted had no less than a combined 245 prior felony convictions, according to the Justice Department.
A recent investigation by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution uncovered an epidemic of drug overdoses in prison: from 2019 to 2022, the outlet found at least 49 Georgia inmates died from overdoses.
An attorney for Byrd, Katryna Lyn Spearman, did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday.
