Worcester postal worker sentenced for trafficking cocaine via his mail route
Erick Cruz, 29, was sentenced Friday to 34 months in prison, prosecutors said.
A Worcester man formerly employed as a postal carrier was sentenced last week for his role in a cocaine trafficking ring that smuggled drugs into Massachusetts through the mail, federal prosecutors said.
Erick Cruz, 29, was sentenced on Nov. 8 in Boston federal court to 34 months in prison and three years of supervised release, the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement.
According to authorities, Cruz was among four people in an operation responsible for bringing in over 20 kilograms of cocaine into central Massachusetts. He was the last to be sentenced.
He previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute in excess of five kilograms of cocaine and possession with the intent to distribute over 500 grams of cocaine, officials said.
Co-defendandants Japhet Garcia and Jose Gonzalez were caught entering a Worcester postal facility on surveillance video in December 2017, prosecutors said. They were seen “attempting to retrieve a package shipped from Puerto Rico that had been found to contain approximately three kilograms of cocaine,” officials said.
Following that, investigators wiretapped a phone belonging to Deibby Garcia and discovered conversations between Deibby Garcia and an unidentified person, in which the two discussed the delivery of two packages from Puerto Rico on Jan. 16, 2018.
Authorities also learned that Deibby Garcia arranged with Cruz, then a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier, for the packages to be picked up once they reached Massachusetts.
“During the course of communications between Jan. 9, 2018, and Jan. 13, 2018, Cruz texted Deibby Garcia two addresses, both of which were on Cruz’s assigned route as a letter carrier. Deibby Garcia, in turn, forwarded the addresses to what authorities believed to be his cocaine source in Puerto Rico,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said. “On Jan. 12, 2018, two packages were sent from Puerto Rico to the addresses provided by Cruz and Deibby Garcia. On Jan. 15, 2018, one package was searched pursuant to a federal search warrant and was found to contain three kilograms of cocaine. The following day, federal agents permitted the second package to be provided to Cruz for delivery.”
Investigators later heard more conversations between Cruz and Deibby Garcia, shedding light on their arrangements to have the second package picked up and their speculations “about what had happened to the package that had been seized and searched,” officials said.
“Soon after, the men were arrested and the second package was recovered,” prosecutors said.
In court Friday, Cruz apologized for his actions, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports.
“I’m truly sorry,” Cruz said. “My apologies to everybody in this courtroom, my family especially.”
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