Man charged with getting illegal drugs by mail
May 12—A Portage man faces felony and misdemeanor drug charges, accused of using the U.S. Postal Service to send and receive narcotics, authorities said.
State police in Greensburg charged Lucas Jeremiah Douglas, 18, of the 100 block of Main Street, on May 6, with two drug counts.
According to a criminal complaint, the Pittsburgh office of the Postal Inspection Service uses a drug profile to screen Priority Mail Express and Priority Mail packages.
Drug dealers who ship drugs through the mail often list a false or nonexistent return address, use a valid return address with a false sender's name or no name, or use business names and addresses to reduce the possibility of getting caught, the complaint said.
Postal inspectors also identified Nevada as a "source state" for illegal drugs flowing into Pennsylvania.
Inspectors grew suspicious when the packages showed a return address of 3700 Meade Ave., Las Vegas, Nev. 09102, which is a valid address, but neither the name of Alex Stephens nor the company name of Valley Performance is associated with that address, the complaint said.
State police used a drug-sniffing dog on May 4, and the dog "positively alerted" on the packages, the complaint said.
Douglas retrieved the packages from a P.O. Box at the Lilly Post Office on Thursday.
Troopers stopped him when he left the post office and opened the packages.
Inside, troopers found 100 suspected marijuana blunts, 1,000 suspected LSD tablets, 30 grams of suspected methamphetamine, 890 Alprazolam pills and 275 grams of suspected THC wax.
Douglas told troopers he was picking up the packages for a man who lived in Florida, the complaint said.
Douglas was arraigned by on-call District Judge Susan Gindlesperger, of Stonycreek Township, and released on $40,000 unsecured bond.
