MARCH 5--On the hunt for illegal narcotics being shipped via Express Mail, a Michigan man allegedly repeatedly entered a sorting facility, claimed to be a postal inspector, and walked out with dozens of parcels, many of which contained marijuana, investigators charge.

According to a criminal complaint filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Calvin Coolidge Wiggins, 31, said, “You got me” when questioned Saturday morning by federal agents who had arrested him outside the Priority Mail Center in Romulus. Wiggins is pictured at right.

Wiggins, an investigator reported, admitted that he “previously had been involved in mailing Marijuana via USPS Express Mail and was tired of having the parcels seized.”

So he allegedly sought to seize the parcels of other drug traffickers.

A surveillance team spotted Wiggins entering the facility on March 3 and walking “towards the area of the plant where the Express Mail was being processed.” There, Wiggins was seen taking two parcels and placing them into a wheeled hamper.

Wiggins told federal agents that on “numerous occasions” he had gone to the Romulus facility and “posed as a Postal Inspector in order to steal Express Mail parcels which he believed contained controlled substances,” according to an affidavit sworn by a postal inspector.

Many of the pinched parcels “did contain Marijuana,” revealed Wiggins, who estimated that he had swiped between 40 and 50 Express Mail packages.

The probe of the mail thefts began in January, when postal inspectors determined that multiple packages destined for the Detroit area went missing. Many of the parcels were characteristic of packages that, in the past, had been found to contain controlled substances.

Last month, a review of surveillance footage showed a black male suspect entering the Romulus plant on Saturday, February 11 and walking out with eight packages ranging in weight from two to 28 pounds. The swiped parcels “all originated from known narcotic source areas,” noted Postal Inspector Edmond Rose.

Anticipating that the suspect would return, federal agents Saturday staked out the Priority Mail Center, where they allegedly caught Wiggins in the act.

Wiggins was named in a two-count felony complaint charging him with theft of mail and impersonating a government employee. At a court appearance yesterday, a magistrate judge freed Wiggins on a $10,000 unsecured bond.

Records show that Wiggins is a registered sex offender as a result of a sexual battery conviction in Ohio. He first registered in June 2000, and will have to remain on the offender list for the rest of his life. (4 pages)