The dean of students at Pittsfield High School has been arrested and charged with running a large-scale cocaine trafficking operation around the western Massachusetts area.

Lavante Wiggins, 30, was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. He was arrested with a second Pittsfield man, Theodore “Monty” Warren, 42, who the feds say worked for Wiggins as a drug runner.

Federal investigators built their case through a cooperating witness, whose alleged buys through Wiggins and Warren were documented in a series of text messages.

“He’s finishing his work out gang, I ain’t think he’d take this long,” Wiggins allegedly messaged the cooperating witness on April 29 to explain why Warren, his drug runner, was taking so long to get to an agreed deal.

The witness wanted to buy 500 grams of cocaine and pay off $15,000 in debt to Wiggins, according to an affidavit submitted to support the charges by J. Todd Briggs, a Berkshire County sheriff’s deputy and member of an FBI task force investigating drug trafficking.

The customer Wiggins was allegedly texting had run up some $34,000 in drug debt, a sum that continued to grow as Wiggins and Warren continued to feed the customer’s habit.

Both men appeared in federal court in Springfield on Tuesday. Prosecutors did not seek detention. Magistrate Judge Katherine A. Robertson ordered that both men while under release have no contact with any victims, witnesses or each other except in the presence of their attorneys. She additionally ordered that Warren submit to GPS monitoring, according to the case docket.