A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy admitted Thursday that he tried to smuggle more than a pound of heroin into a lockup where he’d been tasked with investigating gang activity and drug trafficking.
Michael Meiser, 40, pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing heroin with intent to distribute the drug inside the North County Correctional Facility.
Assigned to a specialized unit called Operation Safe Jails, Meiser was supposed to be monitoring gang members who sell drugs, collect protection money and attack other inmates within the eight facilities overseen by the Sheriff’s Department that collectively hold more than 12,000 men and women.
Instead, Meiser admitted in his guilty plea, he conspired with gang leaders to bring heroin into the jails, where the drug can be sold for 20 times its street value.
In an unsigned statement, sheriff’s officials said Meiser, who was arrested 13 months ago, was “relieved of duty” without pay on March 5.
“This incident represents a serious breach of public trust and undermines the department’s duty to safeguard the health and safety of those in our custody,” the officials wrote in an email. Since Meiser’s arrest, the Sheriff’s Department has increased the use of drug-sniffing dogs and mail and body scanners in an attempt to keep narcotics out of the jails, the officials wrote.
Meiser’s attorney didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
In his plea agreement, Meiser admitted that on April 30, 2024, he collected a grocery bag from a woman at a gas station in Valencia that contained two Pringles cans stuffed with more than a pound of black tar heroin. Also in the bag were two envelopes filled with $15,000 — his payment, Meiser acknowledged, for bringing the narcotics behind bars.
Meiser carpooled with another deputy to North County Correctional Facility in Castaic. He slipped the envelopes of cash in a backpack and put the Pringles cans in the trunk of a patrol car in the jail parking lot, the plea agreement said.
According to a sheriff’s report reviewed by The Times, Meiser asked another deputy in a text message to drive the patrol car into a controlled area of the jail. The deputy said he wasn’t able to, and detectives from the Sheriff’s Department’s Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau, who had been tailing Meiser throughout the day, seized the heroin from the patrol car.
Meiser was arrested as a coworker drove him past the jail gates. Detectives searched his home later that day, finding $10,500 in his sock drawer, according to the sheriff’s deport.
His plea agreement does not reference the Mexican Mafia, but internal affairs detectives wrote in the report that Meiser was working with inmate “shot-callers” appointed by the prison gang to oversee rackets in the North County Correctional Facility.
Meiser was one of 17 people charged by Los Angeles County prosecutors in January with conspiring to smuggle drugs into the jails. He was the only defendant in that case, which remains pending in Los Angeles County Superior Court, to also face federal charges.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said Meiser will face a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison when he is sentenced on Dec. 11.
