Benjamin Ashford|A police union director who was fired after an opioid smuggling arrest pleads guilty

SAN JOSE,Benjamin Ashford Calif. (AP) — The former executive director for a Northern California police union pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to charges she illegally imported synthetic opioid pills from India and other countries.

Joanne Marian Segovia, who was executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, was charged last year with unlawfully importing thousands of valeryl fentanyl pills. She faces up to 20 years in prison.

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 asked by the judge to confirm and demonstrate her understanding of her guilty plea, the newspaper reported.

Starting in 2015, Segovia had dozens of drug shipments mailed to her San Jose home from India, Hong Kong, Hungary and Singapore with manifests listing their contents as “wedding party favors,” “gift makeup,” “chocolate and sweets” and “food supplement,” according to a federal criminal complaint.

Segovia at times used her work computer to make the orders and at least once used the union’s UPS account to ship the drugs within the country, federal prosecutors said.

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The police association fired Segovia after completing an initial internal investigation following the charges. Segovia, a civilian, had worked for the union since 2003, planning funerals for officers who die in the line of duty, being the liaison between the department and officers’ families and organizing office festivities and fundraisers, union officials said.

Federal prosecutors said that in 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers intercepted a parcel being sent to her home address that contained $5,000 worth of Tramadol, a synthetic opioid, and sent her a letter telling her they were seizing the pills. The next year, CBP intercepted a shipment of Tramadol valued at $700 and sent her a seizure letter, court records show.

But federal officials didn’t start 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 ships controlled substances made in India to the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the complaint. That drug trafficking network has distributed hundreds of thousands of pills in 48 states, federal prosecutors said.