A former U.S. Postal Service station manager has been sentenced to 97 months in prison for his role in a network that delivered hundreds of pounds of marijuana from West Coast drug producers to customers in Washington, D.C.
Deenvaughn Rowe, 48, of Odenton, Maryland, faced drug and bribery charges. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to four years of supervised release and a $64,000 fine on top of his eight-year prison term.
Rowe’s sentencing follows the sentencing last month of co-conspirators Kendra Brantley, 32, and Alicia Norman, 39, who were letter carriers that delivered the marijuana. Brantley was sentenced to 46 months in prison and Norman to 18 months.
“Rowe, the then-acting manager of the River Terrace Carrier Annex, used his USPS computer to track packages containing marijuana mailed from the Western United States to the Lamond-Riggs Post Office in Washington, D.C.,” according to a Department of Justice news release.
“The packages were typically addressed to fictitious individuals or non-existent addresses. The evidence at trial revealed that once the packages arrived at Lamond-Riggs, Rowe coordinated the delivery of the packages with Lamond-Riggs Letter Carriers Brantley and Norman, among others, by cell phone and text message. Brantley and Norman then delivered the boxes of marijuana on the street to men in expensive cars in exchange for cash bribes.”
This case was investigated by the USPS Office of the Inspector General’s Capital Metro Field Office and the Postal Inspection Service’s Washington Division.
Michael Peck is a correspondent for Defense News and a columnist for the Center for European Policy Analysis. He holds an M.A. in political science from Rutgers University. Find him on X at @Mipeck1. His email is mikedefense1@gmail.com.
