Suburban Postal Workers Convicted in Scheme to Ship Pot Through the Mail

A pair of former U.S. Postal Service employees were convicted Thursday on federal charges relating to a scheme to ship marijuana through the mail.

During a five-month span in 2016, Tinley Park Post Office employees 51-year-old Marvin Jones and 44-year-old Angela Wansley intercepted packages containing marijuana and other illicit substances that had been mailed to the post office by Jayson Smith, a co-defendant in the case, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

As part of the scheme, Jones gave Smith information about unoccupied P.O. boxes and customers who had placed mail-hold requests at the post office, prosecutors said.

Smith then mailed the controlled substances or had packages containing the drugs shipped before providing Jones with tracking information so he or Wansley could intercept them.

Jones and Wansley ultimately gave the packages to Smith or another defendant, Courtney Poindexter, in exchange for cash, prosecutors said.

Following a four-day trial, Jones, of Hazel Crest, and Wansley, of Harvey, were convicted of accepting bribes to perform official postal duties, conspiring to commit obstruction of correspondence and obstruction of correspondence, prosecutors said.

The bribery charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, while the conspiracy and obstruction charges are punishable by up to five years.