When it absolutely, positively had to get there, someone in Florida used FedEx to ship marijuana to addresses in the Baltimore area. But the shipping company botched one of the deliveries, triggering an undercover operation that led to the arrest of a city man and the seizure of 600 pounds of the drug, police said yesterday.
Police were tipped off when four boxes were mistakenly delivered Tuesday to a Northeast Baltimore resident who opened one and discovered a "large shrink wrapped bundle of a green plant material," charging documents say. City officers and Maryland State Police troopers posed as FedEx employees the next day to snare the intended recipient of the 200-pound shipment.
A search yesterday of two addresses connected to the suspect, Richard Gwatidzo of the 4200 block of Diller Ave., yielded eight more FedEx packages containing nearly 400 pounds of marijuana, police said.
Maj. John Hess, a commander in the city Police Department's Violent Crime Impact Division, whose detectives led the investigation, estimated that marijuana sells for about $1,200 a pound on the street.
Across the country, law enforcement agencies routinely pursue drug dealers who use private shipping companies to move their illicit products or large amounts of cash across state lines. The Baltimore Police Department has a small unit of officers - known as the "parcel interdiction group" - who focus on "incoming and outgoing" parcels in Baltimore, Hess said.
"This year has been incredible, between marijuana, heroin and cash seizures," he said.
Shipping companies regularly cooperate with police and allow detectives to pose as their workers, according to news reports.
"We don't tolerate the illegal use of our network," said Matt Ceniceros, a FedEx spokesman. "When it is suspected that our network is abused, we work with the proper authorities to make sure it stops."
Police charging documents lay out the details of the marijuana-mailing mishap.
On Tuesday, two city police officers responded to an undisclosed address in Northeast Baltimore where a resident showed them four FedEx packages. One was open and contained suspected marijuana. The resident, who was not identified by police, was expecting FedEx packages, but not ones filled with marijuana, according to the documents.
"As the officers entered the residence, they immediately detected an odor that they knew to be marijuana," the documents state.
