Mailman pleads guilty to organizing postal carrier drug delivery system

ATLANTA, Georgia (WDEF) – Prosecutors say he organized a drug delivery system among his fellow mail carriers.

And now Robert Elliott Sheppard has pleaded guilty to the scheme.

He is a former mail carrier himself, who was on disability leave.

Prosecutors say he delivered illegal drugs on his route.

And when he went on disability, he recruited others to keep it going.

They say it began in 2014, when an Atlanta drug dealer bribed him to deliver five pound packages to him.

He would intercept the package and then deliver it personally.

When the dealer approached him again two years later, Sheppard was on leave.

So he convinced two co-workers to do it for him.

“Postal carriers occupy a position of trust in our communities and Sheppard violated that trust by exploiting his role as a mail carrier to traffic kilogram amounts of cocaine as well as marijuana,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan.

“Sheppard’s conduct is especially egregious because he recruited other postal carriers to participate in his criminal scheme once he was on disability leave. His conduct and greed potentially exposed countless innocent postal workers and the public to dangerous drugs and to the violence that these crimes frequently cause.”

He’ll be sentenced in November.