LOS ANGELES — A former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy has been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for smuggling heroin inside a pair of Pringles' potato chips cans into a jail complex in the Santa Clarita Valley, according to federal prosecutors.

U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olgui sentenced 40-year-old Michael Meiser to 67 months in federal prison Thursday.

Meiser pleaded guilty in July of last year to one count of possession with intent to distribute heroin at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, located about 40 miles northwest from downtown Los Angeles.

The maximum-correctional facility is part of a larger jail complex known as Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center.

Federal prosecutors said Mesier attempted to smuggle about 1 pound of heroin inside two Pringles potato chips cans into the county jail while he worked as part of an intelligence and investigative unit that monitored gang activity.

Prosecutors said Mesier smuggled the narcotics for inmates in exchange for cash and payments through the Cash App, a digital wallet. Inmates used the app to send $1,500 to a relative of Mesier, according to prosecutors.

Not long after receiving the money, prosecutors said, Meiser drove his 2018 BMW 530i from his home in Lancaster to a Chevron gasoline station in Valencia, where he picked up a grocery bag from a woman related to an inmate.

Inside, prosecutors said, were two Pringle's canisters stuffed with 1.1 pounds of heroin.

Sheriff's officials said that inmates sell the heroin in tiny smears called "papers" and that the amount inside the canisters was worth about $226,000, according to federal and sheriff's officials.

Prosecutors said the bag also contained two white envelopes stuffed with $15,000 in cash — the remainder of Meiser's payment.

Meiser placed the items in a green backpack and carpooled to work with his partner. Once on the jail grounds, prosecutors claimed, Meiser hid the canisters in the trunk of a sheriff's patrol car.

As Mesier and the other deputy were leaving the jail complex that day, they were stopped by sheriff's investigators who found the cash payments in his backpack and retrieved the Pringles' cans hidden in the trunk of the sheriff's radio car, according to investigators.

No other deputies have been implicated in the drug smuggling scheme, but the case brought scrutiny on Meiser's unit and its interaction with inmates.

An investigative report filed by the Sheriff's Department's Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau, which investigated the scheme alongside FBI agents, depicted Meiser's unit as a squad that seemed to acknowledge gang leaders wielded more authority over inmates than their jailers.

In an internal affairs review, Meiser's partner, Deputy Jose Mungui, described being "on the same page" with inmate "shot callers" on issues such as overdoses and violence, which deputies felt they were powerless to prevent. In an interview with internal affairs investigators, Mungui said he and Meiser would ask gang leaders to refrain from killing inmates or harming deputies as they imposed their own brand of discipline.

Meiser's partner said their approach was intended to minimize chaos in the jail system. He said Meiser had developed a rapport with many of the inmates.

It wasn't until February 2024 when investigators learned how close Meiser had become with the inmates, much of it through a series of strange phone calls in jail.

The calls were made by Jose Rodriguez, a reputed gang member and shot caller at the facility, and his alleged right-hand man, Jackie Triplett, according to investigators.

Triplett spoke to a woman who said she'd bought "white Jordans" and "black Jordans" — coded language for methamphetamine and heroin, investigators said.

The next day, Meiser was shown on the jail's surveillance cameras handing Triplett a bag and bedroll, the investigative report says. Later that night, Triplett called to thank the woman, who said it was his "time to shine," according to the report.

Two months later, in a recorded call, an inmate in Rodriguez's module read off the string of numbers that were later decoded to be a request for Pringles, according to investigators.

The day after the call, internal affairs detectives got a warrant to place a tracking device on Meiser's BMW.

Internal affairs investigators were tailing Meiser when he drove to retrieve the package from the woman at the gas station in Valencia, according to investigators.

—Times staff writer Matthew Ormseth contributed to this report.

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