LOS ANGELES – A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy is expected to plead guilty Thursday to taking part in a Mexican Mafia operation to smuggle heroin into a Castaic jail in exchange for cash bribes.
The indictment against Michael Meiser, 40, of Lancaster and others stems from a sheriff’s department and FBI investigation that began in early 2022 into reports of drugs being smuggled into the county jail system.
Meiser has agreed to plead guilty in downtown Los Angeles to a single federal count of possession with intent to distribute heroin, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Meiser is specifically charged with smuggling heroin into the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic. Sheriff’s department detectives arrested Meiser as he and his partner left the jail’s parking lot on April 30, 2024.
Court papers show that earlier that day, detectives searched a bag Meiser allegedly left inside a police cruiser and found about a pound of heroin hidden inside two tubes of Pringles chips.
Meiser was accused of trying to smuggle the drugs to inmate “shot- callers” appointed by the Mexican Mafia to control Latino inmates in county lockups.
The deputy was assigned to Operation Safe Jails, a unit dedicated to investigating suspected gang leaders, according to documents filed in Los Angeles federal court.
Meiser was found carrying a bag containing $15,000 and investigators found another $10,500 in a drawer at his Lancaster home, prosecutors contend.
The indictment describes various security videos allegedly showing Meiser speaking to other defendants in the case, at one point handing a bag to one of the inmates, and in another instance receiving a plastic grocery bag from a woman at a Lancaster gas station, containing nearly a pound of black tar heroin, which he then allegedly carried into the North County Correctional Facility.