A prison mental health worker admitted in court that she was part of a drug trafficking ring that supplied dangerous, addictive substances to inmates at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.
Shelly Mathias, 43, faced Judge Mark Kuhn in Scioto County Common Pleas Court on Tuesday and pleaded guilty to multiple counts of trafficking in drugs and illegal conveyance of drugs into a government facility.
Before entering the plea, she assured the judge she and her attorney understood what the maximum sentence for her crime could be. Her trial was due to start on July 24.
Mathias is due back in court for sentencing on August 24 at 3 pm.
The Scioto County Grand Jury indicted Mathias back in September after authorities discovered the Addiction Counselor had conspired with two inmates to smuggle drugs into the facility.
Convicted drug traffickers Eion Dangerfield and William Burton were named as her co-conspirators in the indictment. Officials recorded Mathias communicating with Dangerfield and Burton about the scheme to smuggle large quantities of dangerous illegal substances, including fentanyl, into the prison. The first recordings were made in late October 2021, and Mathias attempted to bring the drugs into the facility on December 1, 2021.
Back in 2018, her husband, Corrections Officer Matthew Mathias, was stabbed 32 times in an attack by inmates Casey Pigge and Greg Reinke. Shelly Mathias sat tearfully by her husband during the inmates’ trials in 2019.
As well as working at SOCF, her state license shows she worked at a local rehab center for drug abuse.
Mathias’s former coworkers at the prison were angered by her betrayal. After she was injured, they came to her family’s assistance in multiple ways and could not fathom why she would put her coworkers in danger. Others were disgusted she had betrayed her profession as a mental health counselor by supplying drugs to the addicted inmates she was supposed to be helping.
