San Jose police union executive charged with importing illegal fentanyl with intent to distribute

The San Jose Police Officers' Association Executive Director faces legal trouble over alleged illegal drug importation.

The Office of the United States Attorney filed a federal criminal complaint charging Joanne Marian Segovia with attempting to import illegal drugs into the United States for distribution. United States Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey and Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge Tatum King announced, according to a Department of Justice press release.

The criminal complaint was filed on March 27, 2023. It was unsealed on March 28.

The complaint says that the 64-year-old Segovia used her personal and office computers to order opioids and thousands of other pills to her home. Segovia intended to distribute these illegal drugs elsewhere in the United States, according to the complaint.

Segovia was apprehended in a Homeland Security investigation into a drug network that was shipping illegal drugs into the San Francisco Bay Area from outside of America.

She had at least 61 shipments sent to her home from October 2015 to January 2023, the complaint alleges. The shipments came from Hong Kong, Hungary, India, and Singapore, among other countries.

The shipments had been declared as “Wedding Party Favors,” “Gift Makeup,” or “Chocolate and Sweets,” according to the complaint. However, between July 2019 and January 2023, officials opened five of these shipments and found thousands of pills of controlled substances, some of which contained thousands of dollars of illegal drugs.

The complaint also alleges that Segovia used WhatsApp-encrypted communications to plan how she would send and receive pill shipments.

Additionally, it alleges that she continued ordering controlled substances even after federal investigators interviewed her about it in February 2023. Federal agents seized a package addressed to Segovia containing fentanyl in Kentucky on March 13, 2023. The parcel allegedly came from China.

Segovia has been charged with attempt to unlawfully import valeryl fentanyl. For it, she faces a maximum statutory sentence of 20 years in prison.

The prosecutor for the case is Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tartakovsky, with the assistance of Margoth Turcios.