COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX) — Federal authorities charged a husband and wife in Logan County, accused of using the U.S. mail system for drug trafficking.
Justin Salsburey, who court documents said worked for an armed security services company, was arrested last week on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 40 grams or more of fentanyl and possess with intent to distribute a detectable amount of fentanyl and methamphetamine.
His wife, Ruthann Rankin, a teacher at Urbana City Schools, was similarly charged in federal court on Monday.
A United States Postal Inspector said they received information in November 2025 from detectives with the Logan County Sheriff’s Office about Salsburey and his wife receiving shipments of bulk narcotics via the postal service.
Investigators said their records showed 261 parcels from throughout the U.S. went to a location in Bellefontaine between August 1, 2024, and December 22, 2025, using Salsburey’s name or his initials.
Thirty-one of those packages were mailed using postage generated from websites that sell USPS postage in exchange for cryptocurrency. Some of the return addresses for those packages matched those connected to previous kilogram-amount drug seizures in other areas.
State and federal law enforcement surveilled Salsburey’s residence. In November, Logan County Sheriff’s investigators said they pulled trash from the Bellefontaine location that tested positive for the presence of fentanyl.
Court documents noted that two packages were intended for the Bellefontaine location, with a third having been sent from there. Among the first and third packages were counterfeit OxyContin pills that tested positive for fentanyl and orange bill pills that tested positive for meth and fentanyl. The second package was believed to be a replacement for the first, which postal inspectors seized.
Officials executed a search warrant in Bellefontaine on December 30, where they found “approximately 264 grams of blue pills which field tested positive for the presence of fentanyl, approximately 938 grams of orange pills which field tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine, approximately 19 grams of triangular shaped orange pills which field tested positive for the presence of MDMA, along with various other suspected controlled substances and steroids.”
Earlier, investigators surveilled Rankin placing an object into a cooler and later observed a man retrieve the object from the cooler. During the search, investigators said they found a nicotine pouch container inside the cooler with approximately 13 grams of orange pills, which tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine.
They found other pouches inside Rankin’s purse with similar pills and her Urbana City Schools badge.
Rankin reportedly told investigators she helped her husband by putting steroids and orange meth-laced pills she said she believed were Adderall in her mailbox for people to pick up. She believed the blue pills that tested positive for the presence of fentanyl were “Benzos.”
Additionally, she said she had been placing vials of steroids, blue pills, and orange pills in the mailbox or cooler a couple of times a week for the past six months at the direction of Salsburey.
She reportedly told investigators that her husband started selling steroids, and later progressed into selling other drugs.
Salsburey was booked in the Franklin County Jail on December 30 and will remain in custody pending trial. Rankin was charged on Monday, but a future court date was not yet available on the docket.