A deputy assigned to track gangs inside an L.A. jail hid heroin in Pringles cans, and prosecutors laid out exactly who he was doing it for

Michael Meiser, a 40-year-old former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy, has been sentenced to 67 months in federal prison for trying to smuggle heroin into a jail inside Pringles cans. The sentence, of 67 months (about five and a half years), was handed down on Nov. per the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

True Crime News reports that in April 2024, Meiser was working at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, California, where his job focused on monitoring gang activity. Prosecutors said he had an agreement with inmates to smuggle drugs into the jail in exchange for payments.

Meiser tried to bring about a pound of heroin into the facility hidden inside two Pringles potato chip cans. Federal officials estimated the drugs inside the cans were worth about $226,000.

His job was to keep an eye on the gangs

Prosecutors argued that the arrangement was a paid one, not a one-time favor. Meiser received about $1,500 through Cash App and another $15,000 in cash from inmates, the Los Angeles Times reported.

According to his plea agreement, Meiser met two women at a Valencia gas station and received a grocery bag holding the two Pringles cans. The cans contained about 511 grams of heroin, and the bag also held two envelopes with $15,000 in cash.

Meiser then rode to the jail in another deputy’s truck, which took him past the facility’s initial security checkpoint. He hid the cans under computer towers in the trunk of a sheriff’s patrol car and kept the cash in a backpack that also held his loaded handgun.

Investigators stopped Meiser and the other deputy as they drove out of the jail at the end of the day. They found the cash in his backpack and recovered the Pringles cans from the patrol car trunk. The FBI handled the case with help from the sheriff’s department’s Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau.

Meiser pleaded guilty in July 2025 to one count of possession with intent to distribute heroin. Under federal law, that charge carries a mandatory minimum of five years and a maximum of 40 years when it involves 100 grams or more of heroin, according to a Justice Department guide to federal drug statutes. The roughly 511 grams found in Meiser’s cans put him well past that threshold, and his 67-month sentence sits just above the minimum.

Drug cases involving large amounts can carry heavy penalties at the state level too, as a suitcase marijuana smuggling case showed. Meiser will now serve his sentence as an inmate rather than a deputy.