Investigators look to close drug ‘loophole' in mailing services

The package was addressed to “James Roberts and Kids” at an address in Tampa, Fla.

Its contents, however, were anything but kid-friendly.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service discovered nearly six pounds of marijuana hidden in the parcel mailed Dec. 2 from a post office in Mission — one of about 30 investigators have found laden with illicit drugs in the past two months.

And while authorities say this form of trafficking is as old as the mail service itself, local and federal authorities are increasingly turning their attention to those who exploit the U.S. mail and private parcel services as one of the widest loopholes in ongoing counternarcotic efforts.

“It’s been going on for years,” said Will Glaspy, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s McAllen office. “But it’s definitely getting more attention from law enforcement than it ever has.”

Since November, at least 25 Rio Grande Valley residents have been arrested for trying to smuggle narcotics through the mail to destinations as far away as New York, Tennessee and Puerto Rico, according to federal court filings.

For many of the accused, dropping a drug-laden package off at a post office seemed like a low-risk way to make some easy cash, they are quoted as saying in court documents.

Using fake return addresses, the mailers typically hit a scheduled rotation of mailing spots in all Valley cities, label their shipments with fake return addresses and get paid anywhere from $100 to $200 a package for their trouble, authorities said.

“Every local agency has been pursuing these cases around here,” said Mission police spokesman Sgt. Jody Tittle, whose department has arrested several suspects in the last year for using private services like UPS or FedEx to mail drugs.

“You can park outside of any mailing location for a few hours and typically find at least one person. And they’ll usually admit it when you question them.”

Agents with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the investigative branch charged with safeguarding the nation’s mail, have identifying these suspicious packages and the people mailing them down to a science.

In the case of the box addressed to James Roberts and his children, investigators honed in on the woman trying to ship it because the box’s appearance was “consistent with parcels previously identified in other investigations, which were found to contain controlled substances,” according to a criminal complaint later filed against her.

While she initially told inspectors that the package contained a vase and some toys, she later admitted to knowingly smuggling marijuana for a $200 fee. The return address another woman linked to the package used to belong to her ex-mother-in-law, the documents state.

In other recent cases, traffickers shipping marijuana have confessed to moving across the state solely to enter into this lucrative Valley trade. Others have said they’d been making a living mailing drugs for as long as two years, court documents in their cases suggest.

But nearly all claim to be only distantly associated to the drug trade.

Unlike more traditional forms of narcotics smuggling, many of those arrested for mailing marijuana tell investigators they were hired by someone else who supplied the drugs or that they were merely dropping off the parcels on behalf of a friend.

In many ways, the modern day mail trafficker fits a profile akin to “straw purchasers” — or those paid to illegally buy firearms for others — in the world of gun sales, Tittle said.

“It’s almost the same as trying to pass drugs through a checkpoint,” he said. “If you look like a family or a nice person, they’re less likely to stop and search you.”

Of those 25 arrested by the postal inspection service in the last two months, seven were women and five were older than 40. All were caught trying to ship less than 20 pounds at a time, according to court documents.

But those tiny sums can add up.

Earlier this month, federal agents in New Jersey arrested 28 individuals allegedly involved in a drug trafficking ring that received up to 120 pounds of marijuana every week in packages mailed from McAllen-area post offices and private shipping centers.

While many of the individual members may have viewed their one or two packages as a minor transgression, prosecutors described the whole of their efforts as a “consistent, organized operation.”

And one with very real consequences.

Each of those arrested in the recent Valley mail trafficking cases now faces up to five years in federal prison.

Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.