United States Attorney Thomas F. Kirwin, Northern District of Florida, announced today that four defendants were charged in a federal drug conspiracy out of Santa Rosa County.

Shawn Caudell, 37, Tolanda Talley, 37, Ashley Rossel, 24, and Erica Smith, 21, all of Milton, were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiring to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine as well as conspiring to possess or distribute a listed chemical, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The criminal complaint, unsea, ed in United States District Court this morning, alleges

that the co-defendants obtained significant amounts of pseudoephedrine from area pharmacies in order to manufacture methamphetamine in homemade laboratories. The complaint alleges that this included hundreds of instances wherein one or more of the co-defendants would purchase multiple boxes of pseudoephedrine in a single day. The complaint explains that law enforcement officers were able to track these suspect searches by cooperating with area pharmacies.

Law enforcement officers then executed two separate search warrants on the residences of the codefendants, resulting in the seizure of methamphetamine, the ingredients to manufacture methamphetamine, thousands of dollars in cash, and over 15 firearms.

This case was investigated by the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office, the U.S. Drug

Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.