Page Belcher Federal Courthouse. DYLAN GOFORTH/The Frontier

A former Mayes County deputy accused of stealing methamphetamine from evidence has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Tulsa on two criminal counts of obtaining illegal drugs by fraud and destroying or altering evidence.

Former Lt. Brett Mull, 47, was indicted by the federal grand jury in Tulsa last week, though the indictment was not unsealed until late Tuesday.

Mull, who was fired by the Mayes County Sheriff’s Office in early July after investigators with the District Attorney’s Drug Task Force said they discovered opened evidence packages that had contained meth at his residence, was already the subject of a criminal complaint filed in federal court in October for allegedly tampering with evidence.

Until July, Mull was head of the Mayes County Sheriff’s Office’s drug interdiction unit, which conducts surveillance, intelligence and undercover drug enforcement operations.

The indictment adds a second criminal count against Mull — obtaining meth by deception “in that defendant used his position as a Mayes County Deputy Sheriff and Lieutenant over the narcotics unit to steal methamphetamine that had been officially seized as evidence,” the indictment states.

Last month, The Frontier reported that questions about Mull had surfaced prior to him being appointed to head the narcotics unit in 2015. In 2005, while working as a Cherokee Nation Marshal K-9 team, Mull was suspended for allegedly testing positive for meth. Though Mull told investigators that the positive test may have been because he had been part of an operation that took down a working meth lab three days prior to the test, investigators discovered that the lab bust had been 10 days prior to the test, and that the levels found in his system were too high to account for second-hand exposure.

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Mayes County Sheriff Mike Reed told The Frontier that he requested that Mayes, Craig and Rogers County First Assistant District Attorney Brian Surber, a former Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs agent and attorney, investigate the matter prior to Mull being named to head the drug unit, and that Surber had said the allegations against Mull were unsubstantiated.

Though little other information was released with the unsealing of the indictment, the indictment itself states that “From in or about February 2017 to July 3, 2018, … Mull, did corruptly alter, destroy, mutilate, and conceal a record, document, and evidence with the intent to impair it’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.”

In February 2017, Mull was the affiant and lead investigator on a search warrant for a Pryor residence in which two vehicles — a 2013 Jaguar and a 2006 Ford F-250 Amarillo Edition — belonging to Shelley Dodson were seized. Though Dodson’s live-in boyfriend was arrested and charged with meth possession and other felonies, Dodson was never arrested or charged with a crime.

Dodson hired an attorney and attempted to have her vehicles returned, but that was dropped after what she and her attorney perceived as veiled legal threats against Dodson by the district attorney’s office, which was handling the vehicle forfeiture case, in the form of a supplemental report completed by Mull shortly after Dodson filed her case.

Reed said both of Dodson’s vehicles had been used in undercover operations after they were turned over to the sheriff’s office in April, though no log is kept recording what Sheriff’s Office employees are using what vehicles. Other witnesses have told The Frontier that the vehicles were being driven by deputies for their own personal use, sometimes driving the vehicles to and from their personal residences.

The case against Dodson’s ex-boyfriend, and at least two others, was voluntarily dismissed by the district attorney’s office shortly after Mull’s firing. Both of Dodson’s ex-boyfriend’s vehicles, which had also been seized by deputies, were returned to him after the charges were dropped, records show.

If convicted, Mull could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.