Case of Former San José Police Union Official Charged With Attempting to Import Illegal Drugs Could Be Resolved by August

The long-running case of a former San José police union employee charged with attempting to illegally import drugs to the U.S. could be resolved by August.

Joanne Segovia, the former longtime executive director at the San José Police Officers’ Association, appeared in federal court today in San José for the first time since her initial hearing in March 2023.

Segovia, now 65, was charged in connection with an apparent international drug ring scheming to bring illicit opioids into the Bay Area and the U.S. She came to the attention of Homeland Security Investigations agents who were pursuing leads in the case.

At the time of her charging, officials said she could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted, though it appears the case could be headed toward a plea bargain, according to legal filings and statements by attorneys in court.

Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins told prosecutors and Segovia’s defense attorneys on Tuesday they’d need to appear in court Friday to give a status update on the case, which has been continued 14 times while the two sides discussed facts and circumstances of the case.

Many of the requests by attorneys for time extensions came just hours before a hearing was scheduled to begin.

Cousins reminded the attorneys of the public interest in the “prompt disposition of criminal cases.”

“The 14 continuances made me think then and now that the public’s interest was not being satisfied,” Cousins said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tartakovsky, the lead prosecutor on the case, told Cousins the government is “keenly interested” in bringing the case to a resolution.

“It hasn’t happened yet, despite extensive discussions, because there are a number of very unusual factual issues that this case presents,” Tartakovsky said.

He asked the court for a month more time but said he wouldn’t seek another extension after that.

“One last extension. At that point, the government will either present the court with a resolution or the government will indict. But that will be the end of the line,” Tartakovsky said.

Part of the reason for the extensions in the case is “differences in the government’s and the defendant’s views of the facts,” Segovia’s attorney, Will Edelman, wrote in a court filing.

Edelman, citing health issues and personal difficulties, is withdrawing from the case and Segovia will be represented by attorney Adam Gasner. Edelman noted in his filing that finding a new attorney for Segovia and transitioning the case to Gasner required additional time.

Nonetheless, “the parties have engaged in extensive back-and-forth discussions about such potential resolutions, including multiple meetings, presentations, and detailed correspondence,” Edelman wrote. He characterized the talks as productive.

“A potential case resolution that has been discussed and refined extensively remains a possibility,” he wrote.

Gasner asked the court to schedule the next hearing for August 15 to ensure he has time to review all the details of the case, and Cousins granted the request.

Julia Jayne, a white-collar criminal defense attorney based in Berkeley, said the length of this case is not exceptional, as two sides are trying to find a middle ground.

“This is what should be done in every case, right? If you want to potentially resolve it, you go back and forth, you talk about it, to try to figure out a resolution. Sometimes that takes time,” Jayne said. “(The attorneys) are basically saying ‘it’s not like we’ve been sitting around doing nothing.’”

Tartakovsky, Gasner and Segovia all declined to comment when leaving the courthouse Friday.

While prosecutors listed just one alleged crime in a March 2023 criminal complaint against Segovia, a supporting report written by a Homeland Security special agent laid out a series of alleged actions by Segovia over several years, which officials said are consistent with the shipping, receiving and distributing of illicit drugs.

Segovia used both her personal computer and a computer at the police union office to order thousands of opioids and other pills to her San José home “and agreed to distribute the drugs elsewhere in the United States,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said previously.

From October 2015 to January 2023, Segovia had at least 61 shipments mailed to her home, originating from various other nations. While the shipping information for the packages claimed they contained things like “Wedding Party Favors,” “Gift Makeup,” or “Chocolate and Sweets,” investigators believe they contained drugs.

“Between July 2019 and January 2023, officials intercepted and opened five of these shipments and found that they contained thousands of pills of controlled substances, including the synthetic opioids Tramadol and Tapentadol,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Investigators seized drugs at both her home and office, including hundreds of Tapentadol pills at her police union office.

Investigators said Segovia used CashApp and PayPal to send money to people in various countries and WhatsApp to send and receive hundreds of logistics messages and photos to a person with an Indian country code phone number.

In one image she allegedly sent showing a PayPal payment confirmation of $999.99, her work computer monitor can be seen along with a San José Police Officers’ Association letter opener and one of her police union business cards below the monitor.

When initially confronted about the alleged drug shipments, federal investigators said Segovia lied to them about her activities and tried to shift blame onto her housekeeper. Though Segovia is not a police officer and was an administrative employee for the union representing roughly 1,100 San José police officers, investigators said she claimed at one point to “work for the police department.”

Segovia is alleged to have continued ordering drugs after being interviewed by federal authorities in February 2023. A package sent from China in March 2023 addressed to her and labeled as containing a “clock” was seized by federal agents in Kentucky. The attorney’s office said the package actually contained valeryl fentanyl.

Attorneys in the case have not commented on what a possible deal might look like.

“Where a case involves serious drugs, that involves any kind of distribution, somebody is often looking at prison time,” Jayne said. She noted the amounts of drugs involved and mitigating issues like addiction could also factor into any potential deal.

In the roughly 14 months after Segovia’s first court hearing, federal judges approved some travel for her, allowing her to attend family events out of state and go on vacation. She was not permitted to travel internationally, according to court documents.

Segovia was fired by the police union on April 7, 2023, after an initial internal investigation by police union executives. In the wake of the drug charge revelations, union officials claimed there were no other union employees or police officers involved in the alleged drug crimes and that no one knew about Segovia’s behavior.

Police union leaders said last year that the organization would also hire an outside investigator to look into Segovia’s alleged actions and examine the union’s own internal processes to see if there were steps that could have been taken to identify her alleged behavior sooner.