SAN JOSE, California — The former executive director of a Northern California police union pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to charges of illegally importing synthetic opioid pills from India and other countries.
Joanne Marian Segovia, executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, was charged last year with the unlawful importation of thousands of valeryl fentanyl pills. She faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
Segovia’s plea before a federal judge in San Jose was part of an agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which agreed to reduce the severity of her charges, the Mercury News reported. She only said yes when the judge asked her to confirm and demonstrate her understanding of her guilty plea, the newspaper reported.
Beginning in 2015, Segovia had dozens of drug shipments sent from India, Hong Kong, Hungary and Singapore to her San Jose home with manifests listing contents as “wedding party supplies,” “makeup gift,” “chocolate and sweets” and “food.” addition,” according to a federal criminal complaint.
Segovia occasionally used her work computer to place orders and at least once used the union’s UPS account to ship the drugs within the country, federal prosecutors said.
The police association dismissed Segovia after completing an initial internal investigation into the allegations. Segovia, a civilian, had worked for the union since 2003, where he planned funerals for officers killed in the line of duty, served as a liaison between the department and officers’ families and organized office festivities and fundraisers, union officials said.
Federal prosecutors said that in 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials intercepted a package sent to her home address containing $5,000 worth of Tramadol, a synthetic opioid, and sent her a letter telling her they had confiscated pills. The following year, CBP intercepted a $700 shipment of Tramadol and sent her a seizure letter, court records show.
But federal officials didn’t begin investigating Segovia until 2022, when they found her name and home address on the cellphone of a suspected drug dealer who was part of a network that shipped controlled substances made in India to the San Francisco Bay Area. the complaint. That drug trafficking network distributed hundreds of thousands of pills in 48 states, federal prosecutors said.