Thirteen Penn State students charged in Operation Drugs Unlimited cocaine ring

Pledges mixed cocaine with creatine to bag more than 200 portions

Pennsylvania authorities have charged 13 current and former Penn State students in a campuswide cocaine distribution ring that authorities have dubbed “Operation Drugs Unlimited,” according to criminal complaints filed by Pennsylvania police and grand jury testimony. The case ensnared five fraternities and one fraternity member’s father, and centers on Delta Upsilon senior brother Thomas Robinson, identified by former fraternity brothers’ testimony before a Pennsylvania grand jury and by criminal complaints filed by Pennsylvania police as “the instigator” of an at-home assembly line in which pledges broke down a brick of cocaine, mixed it with creatine and bagged it using protective equipment and a plastic folding table the pledges purchased on shopping runs to places like Walmart.

The case comes six years after the 2017 hazing death of Tim Piazza, a 19-year-old pledge at another Penn State fraternity who died from severe injuries after becoming intoxicated during a hazing ritual. Piazza’s death prompted Penn State to tighten oversight of Greek life, though the crackdown did not deter a broader culture of substance use at fraternity houses, according to people who attended at the time. Recent graduates told The Wall Street Journal that some houses were long known as sources for cocaine, Adderall, marijuana and other drugs.

Six years after Piazza’s death, top university officials held a meeting to tell Greek life leaders they planned to relax some of the post-crackdown regulations, according to a memo obtained by Spotlight PA. The day after that meeting, court records show, Robinson completed eight weeks of pledging and was initiated into Delta Upsilon. He had joined the fraternity in 2022.

During his first spring in the fraternity, according to grand jury documents, Robinson began buying marijuana from a Native American reservation in Salamanca, N.Y., after a friend in Phi Kappa Theta told him about the supplier. Robinson testified to the grand jury that he would buy a pound for $300 and resell it for upwards of $1,500. He also began buying cocaine and Adderall.

In the summer of 2023, Robinson teamed up with fraternity brother Mohammed Huraibi — described in testimony as the house’s alleged former cocaine distributor — to purchase 100 grams of cocaine for $4,000, according to grand jury testimony from Huraibi. In the fall, Huraibi introduced Robinson to his own supplier: Agostino Abbatiello. All three men now face felony charges.

By 2024, Huraibi wanted out of the drug ring and tapped Robinson to take over. Within a year, Robinson became known as Delta Upsilon’s main dealer, according to grand jury testimony. He also began selling outside the fraternity, prompting friends and brothers to warn him the operation was growing too large and that he could land everyone in trouble.

At an Aug. 17 press conference, the Pennsylvania attorney general said police in State College, where Penn State is located, had linked Robinson to an “upper-level trafficking organization” that sourced drugs from Philadelphia and New York. The group was led by a former student whom witnesses called the largest drug dealer on campus — Abbatiello, a Sigma Chi member who witnesses said gave himself the nickname “the Godfather.” Penn State’s Sigma Chi chapter operates independently from the school, according to Penn State’s running list of suspended and unrecognized groups, and is not subject to university oversight or regulations.

The case has captured national attention. Pennsylvania authorities dubbed it “Operation Drugs Unlimited.” Gossip has whipsawed through Penn State group chats and become the butt of comment-section jokes. Online onlookers nicknamed the main dealer “Pablo Pledgescobar.” Hazing was back in the headlines.

To scale up the operation, Abbatiello recruited his own Sigma Chi brothers to travel to New York and pick up bags from a Long Island acquaintance whom a witness identified at a Sept. 2 preliminary hearing only as “R.J.,” according to grand jury documents. When Lars Zeepvat, a Sigma Chi brother, could not repay a $1,500 loan from Abbatiello to cover a spring break trip, Zeepvat worked off the debt by making cocaine deliveries, he told the grand jury. As authorities closed in, Zeepvat said, Abbatiello pleaded with him not to cooperate. R.J.’s identity has not been disclosed.

The news has surprised people who knew Abbatiello growing up. Raised in Westbury, N.Y., he graduated in 2020 from Chaminade High School, a Roman Catholic all-boys school in Mineola where tuition runs nearly $20,000 a year. Former classmates in his homeroom told The Wall Street Journal he was highly confrontational, using a homophobic slur and other insults toward peers — two of whom transferred out of Chaminade afterward. He was sometimes seen smoking marijuana on school grounds, according to one former classmate, but did not have a reputation for dealing drugs. Chaminade did not respond to a request for comment.

By spring 2024, Robinson had become Delta Upsilon’s pledge educator. According to grand jury testimony from a former pledge, Robinson on March 15, 2024, began sending him on cocaine deliveries to other fraternities. Four days later, Robinson asked him and another pledge to buy a white folding table, two glass trays, two face masks, two pairs of lab goggles and 15 packs of plastic baggies on a shopping run to places like Walmart. When the pledges returned to Robinson’s room, Robinson produced a brick of white powder — which they believed was cocaine — and showed them how to break it down. He instructed them to mix it with creatine, a dietary supplement used by bodybuilders and athletes, and carefully weigh a half-gram of the cocaine-creatine concoction into each of the baggies. The process took about two days and produced more than 200 bagged portions.

Robinson recruited a new cohort of pledges for the same task in the fall of 2024, as he began his second-to-last semester. Three former pledges testified that Robinson pulled them aside and asked them to hold out their hands — he wanted to see who could keep them steady for what he called a mysterious task. Two pledges passed; one failed. Robinson immediately replaced the third with another pledge, who passed. He told the three men to sign nondisclosure agreements, which he then tore up and threw away, then revealed the task: the brick of cocaine, the creatine, the folding table and the measuring supplies. In the basement of the DU house, he put the pledges to work.

The criminal investigation began in September 2024, when State College Police Detective Donald Paul recruited a confidential informant who connected to Robinson through a DU friend, according to grand jury documents. Over the following weeks, the informant made several controlled purchases from Robinson — including 2.5 grams for $140 in cash and a full ounce for $1,200 — coordinating over Snapchat and paying through Venmo under the handle “Tom-robinson-53.” After the fifth controlled purchase, Paul approached the informant’s friend, the DU member who had made the original connection. That DU member made the final controlled purchase from Robinson: a half gram of cocaine for $20 on Dec. 12, 2024.

The next day, police raided Robinson’s room. At first, Robinson thought the officers were his brothers playing a prank. “I’m gonna f— you up,” he told them repeatedly, according to court documents. He resisted arrest, the documents said, until officers tased him. A search of a safe in his room turned up cocaine, Adderall, marijuana, almost $2,000 in cash and a loaded Kimber .45 caliber handgun.

One of Robinson’s first calls after his release on bail was to a friend and DU brother identified in the documents as Matson, using a phone belonging to his father, Paul Robinson. According to grand jury testimony, Robinson had kept a second safe under the desk in his bedroom where he stashed drugs and money, and for which only Robinson had the combination. Matson, spooked by Robinson’s arrest, said he had buried the safe in a wooded area about 30 minutes outside of State College, in a hiding place he marked on Apple Maps.

Paul Robinson, who Matson later testified desperately wanted the safe back, allegedly picked up Matson at the DU house days after Robinson’s release and drove him to the site. There, Matson dug up the safe and hid it under a blanket in the back row of Paul’s car. Father and son were grateful, Matson said, swearing him to secrecy.

On Aug. 18 — the day after prosecutors filed the case in court — Paul Robinson posted on Facebook: “I promise I tried only to do what was right and lawful at all times.” The post was later deleted, according to TribLIVE. In a statement from his lawyer, Paul Robinson denied the charges and said of his son: “His honesty was used against him, and it put him into a now deeper hole, but he still continues to do everything he can to show that his terrible mistake in college is not who he is.”

The Robinsons, Abbatiello, Zeepvat, Huraibi and Robert Zanolla are scheduled to return to court Sept. 30. Abbatiello has requested that a “speedy trial” begin by the end of the year, according to a Sept. 22 court filing. Eight men charged with misdemeanors have hearings set for Oct. 14. Penn State has placed Delta Upsilon on interim suspension, and Sigma Chi’s national organization has placed its Penn State chapter under interim suspension. The university said it is improving its hazing education.