A South Portland mail carrier facing up to 25 years in prison after allegedly aiding a drug trafficking ring continues to work her daily shift for the U.S. Postal Service, according to a local union head.
The Manhattan, New York, District Attorney’s Office last month indicted Katie Montgomery of South Portland on a charge of felony conspiracy following an investigation into FireBunnyUSA, a vendor out of New York and California that allegedly shipped over 10,000 packages containing cocaine, ketamine, MDMA and other drugs between 2019 and 2022, according to court records.
The indictment claims Montgomery was a repeat FireBunny customer and in July 2022 offered Nan Wu and his accomplices advice on how to import MDMA and ketamine into the United States – and checked the status of incoming packages to see if they had been flagged by the postal service.
“NY and cali are really hard with going through but Chicago and Puerto Rico are easier,” read one message authorities found on Wu’s phone from an account called “jherigarcya” that was linked to Montgomery’s name and address, according to court records. “I’ll ask around and find out what’s working now.”
Court records do not explain how Montgomery may have initially come into contact with Wu.
Montgomery pleaded not guilty on Feb. 17 in Manhattan Supreme Court before being released from custody without bail. Neither Montgomery nor her attorney, Peter Frankel, responded to several attempts to discuss the case and Montgomery’s relationship with FireBunny.
A postal service spokesperson would not confirm Montgomery’s employment status and referred a reporter to the USPS Office of the Inspector General. A spokesperson said that the agency doesn’t “have information regarding a USPS employee’s current employment status.”
But according to her union representative, Montgomery is still working her normal mail route.
Mark Seitz, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers Local 92, said he has spoken with Montgomery since the charges were filed, and she seemed confident she had done nothing wrong and that the case against her would soon be dropped.
“To me, a lot of it doesn’t make sense,” Seitz said, noting letter carriers don’t use the computer systems capable of checking a package’s status. “We can’t even do half the stuff that they’re saying that she was doing because we don’t have access to that stuff.”
The USPS Office of Inspector General investigations closed 524 narcotics investigations between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022, up from 223 two years prior, according to the department’s semiannual reports to Congress. As of January 2021, all packages shipped to the U.S. must have advanced electronic data intended to help customs agents identify illicit goods, including drugs.
Wu and three other operators of FireBunny sold more than $7 million worth of drugs from their bases in Flushing, New York, and Upland, California, between 2019 and 2022, relying on the anonymity of the dark web and the cryptocurrency Monero. Much of the laundered money was converted to Bitcoin and then exchanged for U.S. dollars and Chinese yuan, according to court records.
FireBunny’s operations shut down after searches of the New York and California locations in July and August 2022 turned up drugs, packing and shipping supplies and communications with FireBunny customers including Montgomery, court records show.
Montgomery’s next appearance in Manhattan Supreme Court is set for March 30.
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