Through rain, snow, sleet—but especially snow—a Queens mailman delivered the mail and a couple kilos of coke, prosecutors announced yesterday. 49-year-old Felix Soto, who resides in the Bronx, faces up to twenty years in prison on charges of selling a controlled substance and second-degree conspiracy. "The defendant is accused of delivering more than just the mail while carrying out his duties as a U.S. mail carrier," Queens DA Paul Brown said in a statement [pdf]. “It is alleged that he used his position as a postal employee to put dangerous drugs out on the street. In doing so, he broke the law and betrayed the trust of the Postal Service and the public, as well." How will we ever trust the Postal Service again? Oh right, we have no choice.
Prosecutors say they caught onto Soto's side gig as a drug mule during a long-term joint narcotics investigation. Acting on a tip that a drug package had been sent through the mail and received at JFK Airport, investigators tracked the package to a post office in the Bronx, where Soto "took possession of the package in his capacity as a postal carrier." He was later spotted in uniform sitting in a U.S. Postal Service truck in the Bronx, when an individual approached the vehicle and Soto handed him the package, which contained two bricks of cocaine, each weighing approximately one kilogram and each having a street value of approximately a quarter of a million dollars."
Obviously this really blows for Soto, who is awaiting arraignment in Queens, but the real tragedy here is that none of that coke filtered down to his coworkers; maybe if they had a little Bolivian marching powder we could get our New Yorker delivered before Thursday. Whatever they're on at our local post office, it's definitely not cocaine.
