Ex-LA Deputy Sentenced for Heroin Hidden in Pringles Cans
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Once you pop, you can’t stop. A former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy is headed to federal prison after he was caught smuggling heroin toward a jail inside Pringles cans.
Michael Meiser, 40, of Lancaster, California, was sentenced Thursday, Nov. 5, to 67 months in federal prison. He pleaded guilty in July 2025 to possession with intent to distribute heroin.
Prosecutors say Meiser, who worked in a unit monitoring gang activity, agreed with inmates at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic to smuggle drugs into the jail for cash and Cash App payments. On April 30, 2024, he met two women at a Chevron station in Valencia, and one of them handed him a grocery bag. Inside were two Pringles cans packed with about 1.1 pounds of heroin, plus $15,000 in cash.
Meiser stuffed the bag into a backpack alongside his loaded handgun and headed to the jail with a fellow deputy. After clearing the first security checkpoint, he allegedly hid the cans under computer towers in the trunk of a sheriff’s radio car. He then spoke with an inmate involved in the scheme for several minutes, according to TrueCrimeNews.
Sheriff’s investigators stopped Meiser as he left the jail. They found the cash, his loaded gun, and his badge in the truck, and the heroin in the radio car’s trunk. Officials valued the drugs at about $226,000.
Meiser is one of 18 people indicted in a broader jail smuggling scheme linked to the Mexican Mafia. No surrender date has been announced.
