SAN JOSE — A former executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association admitted in federal court Tuesday to illegally importing opioid painkillers, resolving a criminal case that surfaced last year after authorities raided the union’s office on the suspicion she was using it as a drug-trafficking hub.
Joanne Segovia’s guilty felony plea in front of Judge Eumi Lee follows through on her attorney’s statement at an Aug. 15 hearing that she was planning to accept culpability for the crime, which occurred after the U.S. Attorney’s Office reduced the severity of her charges.
Segovia was a civilian administrator for the police union for two decades before she was fired after the criminal accusations surfaced in March 2023. She was originally charged with conspiracy to import valeryl fentanyl; in August, she was arraigned on a new charge of unlawfully importing a controlled substance — with no conspiracy allegation — and the listed drug was changed to Tapentadol, another powerful and highly addictive opioid painkiller.
At that arraignment, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tartakovsky said further testing of an intercepted 2023 shipment meant for Segovia revealed that the package did not contain fentanyl, disproving a claim by federal agents that fueled the original charge.
Segovia’s attorney Adam Gasner said in previous public remarks that his client was importing the pills primarily to feed her own opioid addiction, and that any distribution of drugs was spurred by unnamed actors who exploited her.
On March 24, 2023, agents from Homeland Security Investigations reported seizing 73 Tapentadol pills from Segovia’s home and 283 Tapentadol pills from the police union’s headquarters in San Jose.
Segovia was charged four days later, and has been out of custody since. Her arrest was part of an ongoing HSI probe into a network that was shipping controlled substances to the Bay Area from abroad, and found that at least 61 packages were delivered to Segovia’s home in San Jose between October 2015 and January 2023.
Manifests for the packages indicated senders from countries including India, China and Canada, and listed the contents as wedding party favors, clothes, makeup, candy and health supplements. Authorities reported opening five of the packages between July 2019 and January 2023 and discovering thousands of dollars’ worth of controlled substances, including the synthetic opioids Tramadol and Tapentadol.
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Segovia was further accused of using her work computer and the union office to order and distribute the drugs. In at least one instance, investigators say she used the union’s UPS account to send an illicit package to a supplier in North Carolina.
Agents also examined Segovia’s WhatsApp account and reported finding communications implicating her, including hundreds of messages exchanged with a phone number registered in India between January 2020 and March 2023; those messages discussed shipping and payment details as well as photos of tablets, shipping labels, packaging, receipts and payment confirmations.
Segovia initially pleaded ignorance when she was interviewed in February 2023 by agents who told her that her name was on the shipments of the narcotics, claiming she had only ordered supplements. During a March 2023 interview, she reportedly changed her story and blamed the shipments on an unnamed woman who she said worked as her housekeeper, saying the woman had been impersonating her on WhatsApp.
Investigators would later learn that Segovia had received two letters from U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2019 and 2020 stating shipments intended for her had been seized, with one shipment containing 1,160 grams of Tramadol, and the other 1,418 grams of Tramadol. She reportedly gave the agency a signed response stating she did not want to claim the shipments.
This is a developing report. Check back later for updates.