Former Pasco County deputy turned drug dealer charged with DUI

A former Pasco jail deputy convicted last year of federal drug charges was pulled over in Brandon late Wednesday on suspicion he was driving drunk.

Rodney Philon, 39, was sentenced in September to six months of house arrest and two years of probation after pleading guilty to possession of steroids with intent to distribute.

If a judge determines he violated his probation, Philon could be sent to jail.

Philon was pulled over just before midnight Wednesday at the intersection of Brandon Boulevard and Mount Carmel Road. He refused a blood-alcohol test, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

He was released Thursday on $500 bail.

He first made headlines last year, after authorities say they caught Philon — a husband, father and deputy with a previously good record — selling several tablets of Dianabol to an informant in the parking lot of a Publix on State Road 54.

When deputies came to arrest him in his Wesley Chapel home in March 2008, Philon held off SWAT teams in a six-hour standoff. He later told a judge he was frightened and confused. He made his stepdaughter answer the door and tell deputies Philon was out fishing.

Another former deputy with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office was also convicted in the same case. Don Riggans was convicted of conspiring to distribute thousands of pain pills for illegal sale. He admitted to using his position as a road patrol deputy to conduct a bogus traffic stop on a drug runner (who turned out to be an informant) to rip off the proceeds of the drug sale. Riggans was sentenced in December to two years in prison.

Two others in the ring also got prison time: Robert "Fat Bob" Caddick of Oviedo and Kevin Massimino of Tampa.

Caddick was the chief financial officer of Medipharm and was accused of making and stealing prescription narcotics such as hydrocodone, Xanax and Vicodin. Massimino put the pills into circulation.

Caddick was sentenced to 27 months in prison. Massimino got three years in prison.

Erin Sullivan can be reached at esullivan@sptimes.com.