A former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputy from Lancaster has been sentenced to five years and seven months in federal prison after he was caught trying to smuggle roughly a pound of heroin into a Santa Clarita Valley jail hidden inside two Pringles cans. Michael Meiser, 40, worked as a deputy at North County Correctional Facility in Castaic when he arranged the scheme with inmates in 2024, accepting $15,000 in cash as payment.
According to mynewsla.com, Meiser pleaded guilty in downtown Los Angeles in July 2025 to a single count of possession with intent to distribute heroin. He was also ordered to serve four years of supervised release once his prison term ends, as reported by CBS News.
How the Smuggling Attempt Unfolded
Court records cited by CBS News describe how Meiser met two women at a Valencia gas station, one of whom was associated with a jail inmate. He received two Pringles cans stuffed with heroin along with the $15,000 cash payment, then placed both the drug-filled cans and his loaded handgun inside a backpack.
Meiser rode to the jail campus as a passenger in another deputy's truck. That deputy drove the vehicle past the initial security checkpoint and parked in the jail parking lot, after which Meiser met with an inmate who was participating in the scheme and spoke with him for several minutes, according to the CBS News account.
Arrest in the Jail Parking Lot
LASD investigators stopped Meiser and the other deputy as they began driving away from the jail. Detectives arrested Meiser as he and the other deputy began driving away from the jail's parking lot, CBS News reports. MyNewsLA.com gives the arrest date as April 30, 2024.
A search of the truck turned up a backpack containing the $15,000 in cash, Meiser's loaded handgun, his badge, and his LASD identification, per CBS News. Investigators also found about a pound of heroin hidden inside the two tubes of Pringles chips, according to mynewsla.com. A separate account from hometownstation.com put the amount at approximately 511 grams, or 1.1 pounds, of heroin.
FBI Led a Broader Jail-Smuggling Probe
The FBI investigated the case with assistance from LASD's Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau, hometownstation.com reports. That investigation traces back to early 2022, when the sheriff's department and the FBI began looking into broader reports of drugs being smuggled into the county jail system, according to mynewsla.com.
Ahead of sentencing, Meiser's attorney pointed to other jail-smuggling cases involving former jailers or law-enforcement officers that resulted in sentences ranging from 15 months to several years, as noted by signalscv.com. Despite that argument, Meiser received a five-year, seven-month federal prison term plus four years of supervised release.
