Joanne Marian Segovia, a 20-year employee and executive director of the San Jose Police Officers Association, has been charged with importing and distributing fentanyl, muscle relaxers and other drugs through a complex international mail scheme.
Segovia used her personal and office computers to order thousands of synthetic opioids, including valeryl fentanyl disguised as chocolates, wedding favors and makeup, as part of a plan to distribute them throughout the U.S., according to a criminal complaint filed Monday by the Office of the United States Attorney.
According to the criminal complaint, Homeland Security agents were led to Segovia through an investigation that looked into a network that they said was shipping controlled substances made in India.
Between October 2015 and January 2023, 61 shipments of drugs worth thousands of dollars came from countries such as Hong Kong, Hungary, India and Singapore.
The manifests for these shipments declared their contents with labels like Wedding Party Favors, Gift Makeup, or Chocolate and Sweets, the US Attorneys Office for Northern California said in a press release.
Between July 2019 and January 2023, officials intercepted and opened five of these shipments and found that they contained thousands of pills of controlled substances, including the synthetic opioids Tramadol and Tapentadol. Cindy Chavez, who heads the county's fentanyl working group, said that it's just a reminder that it's just a reminder of how accessible this is. We need to be more aggressive and more assertive in order to deal with interrupting that chain that we just have been unable to break, from a law enforcement and community perspective. Sean Pritchard, president of the San Jose Police Officers Association POA said, "I was just absolutely taken aback, shocked and saddened. As the days have gone by, I'm at a place where I'm now angry." Segovia is described as the grandma of the organization, representing rank and file staff in a department with more than 1,000 officers.
Pritchard told the local media that this person has been known as the grandma of the POA, but it is not the woman we have known for well over a decade.
According to the complaint, Segovia faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.