Philip Dobbins

When a Cody man was caught with multiple ounces of methamphetamine last month, the discovery apparently did not come as a surprise to police.

Newly filed charges indicate that agents with the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation were on to Phillip Dobbins months before he was pulled over in Cody. Prosecutors say Dobbins sold meth and painkilling prescription drugs to both a DCI informant and one of the division’s undercover agents in January and February.

Dobbins was already facing felony counts of possessing a controlled substance in connection with the marijuana and meth found in his Cadillac DeVille during a March 23 traffic stop. Then on Friday, the Park County Attorney’s Office added a charge of possessing a controlled substance with intent to deliver — related to the 12.5 ounces of meth found in his car — plus five counts of delivering a controlled substance from earlier alleged sales of meth, oxycodone and hydrocodone.

Because Dobbins has a prior felony drug conviction, from 2007 in Sheridan County, Park County prosecutors are seeking enhanced penalties that could theoretically spell hundreds of years of prison time.

At a Monday hearing in Park County Circuit Court, Judge Bruce Waters set Dobbins’ bail at $100,000 cash on the new charges. When combined with the earlier charges, he’ll have to post a total of $115,000 to be released.

In an affidavit, DCI Special Agent Juliet Fish indicates that her agency has been investigating Dobbins since at least January, when an unidentified informant named the suspect as their source of meth.

The informant told DCI they’d been buying from Dobbins since last summer, meeting him a couple times at local bars and paying between $60 and $100 per gram of meth. A few days after that interview, the affidavit indicates that the informant bought a half-gram of meth from Dobbins on their own — later telling DCI agents that the drugs had come from a half-pound of meth Dobbins had acquired in Colorado.

Over the coming weeks, charging documents say, DCI supervised as the informant made three so-called controlled buys from Dobbins:

Around 5 p.m. on Jan. 19, the informant bought a gram of meth for $100, in a transaction conducted in a parking space in front of the K-Bar in downtown Powell;

On the morning of Jan. 21, the informant met Dobbins in the parking lot of Rocky Mountain Liquors in Cody and purchased another gram for $60; and in the early afternoon of Feb. 4, Dobbins reportedly sold the informant 10 pills of hydrocodone medication for $50, plus a half-gram of meth for another $50. That transaction took place at storage units on Roberts Street in Cody.

Eventually, DCI had the informant introduce Dobbins to an undercover agent, who pretended to be interested in some speakers Dobbins was selling. Special Agent Michael Phillips agreed to buy a speaker for $40, the affidavit says, but he also expressed interest in buying oxycodone. According to DCI’s account of the Feb. 4 exchange, Dobbins called his source — someone who reportedly was receiving a prescription for 150 to 160 pills at a time — but they were out. 

Agent Phillips then tried to arrange a different purchase several days later, texting Dobbins on Feb. 10 to ask if he knew anyone in the Riverton area who had “clear.” At the time the undercover agent texted Dobbins, charging documents indicate he was traveling with multiple ounces of methamphetamine — and he agreed to meet up with Phillips outside Shoshoni.

“Could u do a ball?” the agent asked, referring to a 3.5 gram amount of meth, known as an eight-ball.

“[I] normally don’t do them,” Dobbins reportedly said of eight balls, but he offered to sell one for $250.

They met up that morning in an area north of Shoshoni, off Tough Creek Road, charging documents say. Agent Phillips said Dobbins produced a bag that held about 4 ounces of methamphetamine, while holding another, similarly sized bag on his lap. Using a scale the undercover agent provided, Dobbins reportedly weighed out 3.7 grams of meth in exchange for the $250 in cash.

As they prepared to part ways, “Dobbins then told Agent Phillips to watch out in Shoshoni for the cops,”  the affidavit from Special Agent Fish says, “because they drive a white unmarked vehicle.”

Less than a week later, on Feb. 16, Dobbins allegedly made one more sale to the undercover operative — providing him six pills of oxycodone for $180 in the Rocky Mountain Sporting Goods parking lot in Cody.

The investigation ultimately came to a head on March 23, when Dobbins was pulled over by Cody police. An officer concluded that Dobbins was under the influence of a controlled substance and found marijuana — with receipts from Denver — plus drug paraphernalia that included an apparent meth pipe.

However, the more significant find came a couple days later, when DCI agents conducted a more thorough search of the 2002 Cadillac. On the driver’s side floorboard, they found roughly 12.5 ounces of suspected meth in a Ziploc bag — one that appeared to have been hidden in a loose panel. Based on the prices that Dobbins was allegedly charging for meth, that quantity would have been worth between $21,000 and $35,400.

A woman who was riding in the car with Dobbins at the time of the traffic stop, Natosha Martin, “indicated she was afraid of being hurt or killed” if she talked about the meth, but admitted to using some of the drugs in the bag, Agent Fish wrote in her affidavit. Martin has been charged with possessing meth with intent to deliver and two counts of possessing a controlled substance for a third or subsequent time (meth and marijuana). Like Dobbins, she remained in jail on Wednesday, with her bail set at $25,000.

Both defendants are awaiting preliminary hearings in circuit court.