Quaalude queenpin: How a 70-year-old Boca woman's international drug operation toppled over

WEST PALM BEACH — Federal agents eyed the package of white powder traveling to Boca Raton from Cincinnati and took note of the woman waiting to collect it. Petite, and old enough to be their grandmother, she drove it home in the trunk of her car.

The package was different from the 90 or so others like it she had received before. In addition to 1.4 grams of Methaqualone packed neatly inside, it contained a small tracker that led Homeland Security straight to 70-year-old Linda Horn's door.

When she wasn't caring for her 94-year-old mother, the septuagenarian was weighing out Quaalude capsules — some to take herself, and others to sell to associates she described as "successful people in her community." Horn made more than $1.3 million from the decade-long drug deals and faced up to 20 years in prison for conspiring to sell the package investigators confiscated in 2021.

She wept in a federal courtroom Thursday and begged the judge for mercy. U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg, who was still a child when Quaaludes became the drug of choice at discos and parties across the U.S., obliged.