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A U.S. District Court judge in Newark freed Glenn Blackstone, 48, on a $100,000 unsecured bond pending sentencing after he pleadd guilty to single counts of bribery and conspiracy.
Blackstone bought the marijuana from a producer in California, then slipped the carriers $50 to $100 a delivery before dealing the drug in Newark, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said.
Blackstone said he paid then-USPS mail carrier Leonard Gresham, 50, of Rahway and an unidentified co-conspirator who'd been working with the service roughly $12,400 for their trouble.
The packages bore bogus names and addresses and weren't directly addressed to him, authorities said.
Several times, Blackstone "asked the mail carriers to remove the parcels from the normal delivery stream and deliver them instead to him at various locations in Newark," Carpenito said.
Gresham pleaded guilty in February to accepting bribes and was scheduled to be sentenced May 30.
Blackstone, meanwhile, is scheduled for sentencing on July 24.
Carpenito credited special agents with the USPS-Office of Inspector General and inspectors from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service with the investigation leading to the guilty plea.
Handling the case for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorney Jihee G. Suh of Carpenito's Special Prosecutions Division in Newark.
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