Two Decatur Residents Sentenced In Cocaine-By-Mail Delivery Plot

ATLANTA – Two Decatur residents who were employees of the U.S. Post Office have been sentenced for taking bribes to deliver packages of cocaine. Eddie Nash, 64, was assigned to the West End Branch of the Atlanta post office, while Tonie Harris, 55, worked at the Sandy Springs post office. Nash has been sentenced to five years in prison and four years of supervised released, and was ordered to pay $3,000 in restitution. Harris was sentenced to three years, one month in prison to be followed by four years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $1,450 in restitution.

Nash and Harris were among 16 U.S. Postal Service letter carriers and clerks from across Atlanta who accepted bribes to deliver packages of cocaine – two kilograms or more at a time – in a wide-reaching undercover operation. The defendants were willing to make the deliveries for bribes as low as $250, and received sentences of between three and nine years in prison.

According to prosecutors, in 2015, federal agents involved in the dismantling of a drug trafficking organization in Atlanta learned that drug traffickers had been bribing postal workers to intercept and specially deliver packages of drugs while they were on their regular routes, including through residential neighborhoods.

Federal agents used a confidential source who posed as a drug trafficker looking for postal workers to deliver packages of kilogram quantities of cocaine or marijuana. The defendants agreed to deliver the packages and negotiated the amount of the bribes they would charge, while law enforcement agents watched from a distance and recorded the interactions. All the defendants chose to deliver cocaine instead of marijuana, believing they could charge a higher bribe for packages of cocaine.

They also agreed to deliver packages on multiple occasions over a period of time. When the confidential source asked if they knew any other postal workers who did the same thing, some of the defendants introduced the confidential source to coworkers who also wanted to deliver packages.

Two other DeKalb County residents were also sentenced in the scheme: Clifton Curtis Lee, 43, of Lithonia, a letter carrier assigned to the Sandy Springs Post Office was sentenced to three years, 10 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $1,800 in restitution, and Frank Webb, 41, also of Lithonia, a letter carrier assigned to the Central City Branch of the Atlanta Post Office, was sentenced to three years, four months in prison to be followed by two years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $3,000 in forfeiture.

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