CHARLOTTE AMALIE — A St. Thomas postal worker got 3 and a half years in federal prison for his conviction on drug conspiracy charges.
Dean Thompson, 54, was sentenced to 42 months on incarceration for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute marijuana and using a telephone in facilitating the commission of a felony, U.S. Attorney Delia L. Smith said.
According to court documents, from July 2016 to March 2017, Thompson and others conspired to deliver and did deliver over 100 kilograms of marijuana to St. Thomas through the United States Postal Service.
As a postal employee, Thompson had both knowledge of and access to the inner workings of the postal service, and he used this knowledge and access to facilitate several shipments of marijuana to St. Thomas.
Specifically, Thompson monitored packages containing marijuana as they arrived on St. Thomas and identified which PO boxes should be used to store the marijuana.
Thompson also alerted co-conspirators when law enforcement was scheduled to inspect packages and later notified co-conspirators when they could safely pick up the packages containing marijuana.
In exchange for his involvement in the drug conspiracy, Thompson took payment in cash and marijuana.
This case was investigated by the United States Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kyle Payne and Yasir Sadat.