Politics Postal Carrier Caught in Conspiracy to Mail Cannabis The Associated Press July 17, 2019 (Marco_Piunti/iStock)

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A postal service worker has been convicted of intercepting packages of marijuana and delivering them to a drug dealer in return for cash payments.

Federal prosecutors say Fred Rivers was convicted Tuesday on a conspiracy count but acquitted of taking bribes. The 47-year-old Newark man faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced Oct. 29.

Rivers was a mail carrier based at the Springfield postal station in Newark.

Prosecutors said he accepted about $100 cash each time he delivered a package to the dealer between October 2016 and September 2017.

The package labels contained false names but real addresses in Newark, and Rivers delivered the packages to the dealer in the station’s employee parking lot. Rivers used a scanner to falsely indicate that the packages had been delivered to the addresses on the labels.

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