A Toledo, Ohio-area man who delivered books to Ohio prisons with drug-soaked pages, including Vice President JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” memoir, will now have to get his own reading material after a federal judge sentenced him to more than ten years in jail.
On November 18, Austin Siebert of Maumee pled guilty in U.S. District Court in Cleveland to possessing methamphetamine with the intent to distribute and being a felon in possession of a handgun. U.S. District Court Judge Donald Nugent sentenced him to 140 months in federal prison, which equates to 11 years and eight months.
According to court filings, Siebert shipped numerous books with drug-soaked pages to inmates in Ohio jails in November and December 2024.
One of the books was Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which discusses his mother’s opiate addiction. In a recorded discussion with a prison inmate, Siebert described the book, which was given to the Grafton Correctional Institution in a package with a GRE study guide, as a “(expletive) romance novel.”
Siebert utilized the “Amazon method” to extract numerous pages from the book. Ohio prisons will only accept books purchased from pre-authorized retailers, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, with evidence of purchase.
According to court records, in schemes like Seibert’s, products are ordered so that a receipt can be generated, after which the transaction is canceled. A different copy of the ordered materials has pages drenched in drugs, which is then wrapped and delivered to the prison in a way that appears to be from the original vendor.
According to court filings, Siebert contacted convicts he knew at the Allen/Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima and the London Correctional Institute to see if they wanted to participate in his scam. Siebert stated that he was developing his own apparatus to rebind books more efficiently after soaking pages in medicines.
In addition to taped phone calls and written notes, jail officials discovered discolored pages in books delivered to inmates by Siebert in packages.
When officers searched Siebert’s home, they discovered a bookbinding machine, Amazon mailing labels, fentanyl, cocaine, a loaded revolver, and at least one book with drug-soaked pages, according to court filings.
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