Los Angeles, California – A deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department admitted in federal court Wednesday to a plot that sounds more like a cartel screenplay than real life: smuggling over a pound of heroin into a county jail using Pringles cans, a grocery bag, and a department-issued patrol vehicle — all while assigned to a unit tasked with keeping drugs out of the jails.
Michael Meiser, 40, of Lancaster, pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute heroin. He now faces a mandatory minimum of five years and up to 40 years in federal prison when he’s sentenced December 11 by U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olguin.
According to his plea agreement, Meiser wasn’t just bending the rules — he was in active coordination with inmates and gang leaders to profit off narcotics in a closed facility, where street drugs can sell for up to 20 times their market value. Meiser’s assignment, ironically, was Operation Safe Jails, a unit created specifically to monitor and dismantle the very gang activities he was now enabling…