What’s in the box? The answer got a postal worker a year of house arrest

U.S. Postal Service worker Evelyn Ramona Price didn’t know much about the mysterious boxes addressed to homes on her Boca Raton route. But a guy named “Steve” was paying Price $50 a box to deliver them to him personally instead of the addresses.

“I figured it was some kind of drugs, but I don’t know what drugs,” court documents say Price told federal agents before they broke open four boxes containing 9.2 kilos of marijuana, retail value about $74,100, according to HonestMarijuana.com.

That’s why Price received one year of house arrest and five years’ probation on one count of bribery of a public official in federal court on Tuesday.

According to documents connected with Price’s guilty plea, “Steve” approached Price in June 2016 by asking for addresses on her route and offering her some side cash for her role in his scheme. A box would have one of the addresses Price had given Steve. On the day the box was scheduled to arrive at Price’s post office, Steve would call her. Instead of delivering the box to the address, she’d bring it to him in the parking lot of an animal hospital or a Publix.

But when the four boxes came on Oct. 27, 2016, Steve called Price that morning to cancel their delivery meeting. He told her to deliver the boxes to the place they were addressed instead.

Three of the boxes — each of which had a New York or Florida return address, but a California postmark — were to homes where Price knew no one would physically accept them. The fourth was addressed to Sylvia Wynstein, 18002 Lake Azure Way, in Boca Raton’s The Oaks community. As there was no Sylvia Wynstein in The Oaks, at least at that address, the business office refused the package.

Price returned to her post office to find investigators waiting to interview her. They knew what was in the box.

This story was originally published October 12, 2017 at 10:09 AM with the headline "What’s in the box? The answer got a postal worker a year of house arrest."