LOS ANGELES — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (USAO - California, Central), published as received.

LOS ANGELES – A former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deputy was sentenced today to 67 months in federal prison for possessing more than one pound of heroin – hidden inside Pringles potato chips cans – that he admitted to attempting to smuggle inside a county jail in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Michael Meiser, 40, of Lancaster, was sentenced by United States District Judge Fernando M. Olguin.

Meiser pleaded guilty in July 2025 to one count of possession with intent to distribute heroin.

According to his plea agreement, in April 2024, Meiser was working as an LASD deputy at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic. He had agreed with inmates to smuggle narcotics into the jail in exchange for cash and payments via the Cash App digital wallet that inmates would arrange for Meiser and one of his relatives to receive.

As part of that arrangement, on April 24, 2024, one of Meiser’s relatives received $1,500 via Cash App from an individual connected to an inmate and later informed Meiser about it.

Six days later, Meiser drove his BMW to a Chevron gasoline station in Valencia, parked it next to a Chevrolet SUV, exited his car and opened its trunk. Inside the Chevrolet were two women, one of whom was associated with a jail inmate.

Meiser walked to the Chevrolet’s driver’s side, where one of the two women handed him a plastic grocery bag containing two Pringles cans loaded with approximately 511 grams (1.1 pounds) of heroin. The bag also contained two white envelopes that contained a total of $15,000 in cash, which represented Meiser’s payment from the inmates for smuggling heroin into the jail.

Later that day, Meiser took the grocery bag and put it into his green backpack, which also contained his loaded handgun, before driving to a fellow LASD deputy’s apartment complex. Once there, Meiser – with his green backpack in tow – got into that deputy’s truck and headed to the jail in Castaic. The other deputy drove his truck into the jail with Meiser in the passenger seat and parked the vehicle in the jail’s parking lot, which was past the jail’s initial security checkpoint.

Meiser then exited the deputy’s truck and took the green backpack – containing the heroin and the cash – and placed it inside the trunk of an LASD radio car. Eventually, Meiser placed the two heroin-containing Pringles cans, which were hidden in a grocery bag, under computer towers inside the radio car’s trunk. 

By that time, he had removed the $15,000 in cash from the grocery bag and placed it in his green backpack. Meiser then closed the trunk, carried the green backpack to the other deputy’s truck, placed it inside that vehicle, and went to the jail’s gym with the other deputy. Later that day, Meiser met with an inmate participating in the smuggling scheme and spoke to him for several minutes.

At the end of that day, Meiser got in the passenger seat of the other deputy’s truck. LASD investigators stopped them as the other deputy began driving the truck outside the jail.

LASD investigators arrested Meiser and searched the other deputy’s truck, where they found the green backpack containing $15,000 in cash, Meiser’s loaded handgun, and his badge and LASD identification.

Investigators also searched the radio car’s trunk and found the two heroin-containing Pringles cans.

The FBI investigated this matter with assistance from LASD’s Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau. 

Assistant United States Attorney Kathy Yu prosecuted this case.