Cherry Hill man gets 34 years in massive pill-selling scheme

A Cherry Hill man was sentenced Wednesday in federal court to 34 years in prison for leading a conspiracy to sell nearly 400,000 oxycodone and other prescription pills in the Philadelphia region.

Leon Little, 38, was convicted in December 2016 by a jury on 50 counts of drug-related crimes for his role in a pill-peddling operation that was aided by a suburban doctor's secretary and some residents of Raymond Rosen Manor, a North Philadelphia housing project, posing as patients suffering from severe pain.

Little took in more than $3 million from the scheme, which he spent on jewelry, flashy clothes, a $17,000 motorcycle, real estate, and a UPS franchise, IRS investigators said. He also gambled more than $1 million of his ill-gotten gains at casinos.

"This defendant was the mastermind behind a massive scheme involving highly addictive drugs, and he lived high on the hog at the expense of other people's misery," said U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain in a statement. U.S. District Court Judge Cynthia M. Rufe also sentenced Little to five years of supervised release.