78 Year-Old Mystery Man's Stop in Junction City, Kansas Leads to $15 Million Cash, Hundreds of Pounds of Pot

When police in Junction City, Kansas, stopped a beat-up pickup truck for speeding in June 2013, the driver got a lot more than a traffic ticket: The stop led authorities to Massachusetts and Arizona, where they said they found about $15 million in cash, almost 400 pounds of marijuana and ledgers detailing drug deals going back to 1992.

The driver, Marshall Dion, told police he was a retiree from Tucson who was living off his $690-per-month Social Security check. He also said he had left his drug-dealing days behind, but federal authorities say he was still going strong at age 78 as a key player in a large marijuana operation. In his truck, police found $828,220 in cash. . .

Much of Dion’s life is a mystery. Public records show he has lived in Boston; Portland, Maine; Grand Junction, Colorado; and Tucson, Arizona. He told police who stopped him in Kansas that he was headed home to Tucson from Pennsylvania, where he had met with his accountant.

Dion, now 79, appeared to live frugally, despite the millions authorities found and two homes he owned in Arizona. When he was stopped in Kansas, he was driving a 2002 GMC Sierra with an old refrigerator and other junk in the truck bed. . .

In 1985, Dion crashed a single-engine plane he was piloting in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, and Dion broke both his ankles. When sheriff’s deputies arrived, he was crawling along a muddy field as bills floated in the air, said Cathy Baxter, then a deputy sheriff. ‘‘This guy didn’t even admit there was any money on the plane. He said, ‘That’s not my money. I don’t know where that money came from,’’’ Baxter said.

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