Guard Caught Smuggling Weed Into Jail in His Lunch

Jason Marek, 29, is better known as ‘Murda’. The feds, however, now have a new name for him – ‘inmate.’

The former Chicago jail guard is now faces years in federal lock-up after a scheme in which he smuggled pot into a county jail using a popular Chicago sub.

Marek, with the help of an inmate’s girlfriend, used a meat-laden local sandwich known as a ‘Gym Shoe’ to hide bags of pot in the hollowed out bun.

He then took his pot-filled lunch to work and sold the contraband contents with the help of three co-conspirators, who just happened to be inmates he was supposed to be guarding.

When caught in June, Marek allegedly had three ounces of marijuana and a bag full of contraband cigarettes in his possession. While the items have a relatively small street value, in prison the small quantity of weed could fetch up to $1000, plus the bribe money paid to get a jailer to bring into drugs to the jail.

The contraband had also been pre-sold, which got Marek in even more trouble when he failed to deliver, especially since the inmates running the pot scheme bribed another city official to get Marek’s address so that he could be harassed or coerced into delivering more pot.

On Tuesday, after months of investigation, the three inmates and Marek were all arrested on federal charges in the drug operation. The city employee who accessed the law enforcement computer to get Marek’s address was also charged and arrested late Monday night.

The Cook County Sheriff initially planned a press conference after the arrests but instead issued a statement saying that corruption at the county jail was not acceptable and he planned to see it was stopped.

“Rooting out corruption in the Cook County Jail is a top priority of mine,” Sheriff Thomas Dart said. “I’m thankful to our federal partners at the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for working closely with my staff to conduct such a thorough investigation and to charge this far-reaching case.”