Vanna White Line: 4 Men Charged in Chicago Heroin Ring

Four Chicago men are behind bars, charged with running a relentless heroin operation on the South Side that pumped 130 grams of the drug into the streets every two days. Joseph Thompson, 33; Mario Cooper, 28; Dewayne Bolden, 26; and Devante Reed, 23, were arrested Thursday in a takedown tied to the so-called ‘Vanna White Line’—a single phone number used to funnel hundreds of thousands of drug orders across the Douglas neighborhood.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Chicago Police Department led the probe, dubbed ‘Operation Wheel of Fortune,’ which exposed a tightly organized narcotics network. Callers dialed the Vanna White Line to place heroin orders, then received meet-up instructions from the defendants. Transactions routinely went down in the 3500 block of South Calumet Avenue and other hotspots in Douglas—a neighborhood long plagued by open-air drug trade.

Federal investigators say the phone line buzzed with activity: 193,720 calls were logged over six months in 2016 alone. Wiretaps, controlled buys, and round-the-clock surveillance peeled back the operation’s layers, revealing that the heroin was stored in an apartment in the 4700 block of South Martin Luther King Drive. The probe was conducted under the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force (HIDTA), a federal initiative targeting drug epicenters.

Thompson, Cooper, Bolden, and Reed were each charged with conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute. They appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael T. Mason and remain in federal custody pending detention hearings. The federal charge carries a mandatory minimum of five years and up to 40 years in prison if convicted.

Announcing the charges were Zachary T. Fardon, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Dennis A. Wichern, DEA Chicago Special Agent-in-Charge; and Eddie Johnson, Chicago Police Superintendent. The U.S. Marshals Service and Hickory Hills Police Department also provided critical support. State narcotics charges have been filed against additional suspects tied to the network.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott Edenfield and Cornelius Vandenberg. As this case moves forward, federal authorities remind the public that a complaint is not evidence of guilt. The defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.