The U.S. Postal Service wants to remind everyone that its couriers aren’t supposed to deliver drugs, after a sting operation discovered 16 letter carriers and clerks in Atlanta took bribe money in exchange for trafficking large quantities of cocaine.
The clerks and couriers, ranging in age from 26 to 64, accepted bribes as low as $250 to deliver two kilograms of cocaine or more at a time, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the North District of Georgia. Federal agents started probing Atlanta-area postal workers after learning of their role in a drug trafficking operation. Given the choice to deliver marijuana or cocaine, all the postal service employees chose to deliver cocaine in exchange for a higher bribe.
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“Postal employees are paid to deliver mail, not drugs,” said Imari R. Niles, special agent in charge of the USPS inspector general, Capital Metro Area Field Office, in a statement. “The vast majority of the Postal Service’s 600,000 employees are hard-working, trustworthy individuals.
Law enforcement caught the drug mules by using a confidential source who posed as a drug trafficker looking for postal workers to complete deliveries for them. Federal agents then watched from a distance and recorded the incidents to arrest the couriers, who all received between three and nine years in federal prison.
Cover image: (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
