SAN JOSE — A former executive director for the San Jose Police Officers’ Association was sentenced to probation Tuesday following her federal conviction for illegally importing opioid painkillers, a scandal that garnered wide attention after the police union’s headquarters were searched by agents as part of the underlying investigation.
Joanne Segovia, 66, was issued the three-year probation term, along with a requirement of 100 hours of community service, in a San Jose courtroom. While she technically faced potential prison time, it was never likely in light of a consensus between federal prosecutors and her defense attorney Adam Gasner that drug addiction, rather than greed, fueled her participation in the crime.
In a sentencing memo submitted earlier this month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tartakovsky stated that though Segovia did indeed help a drug supplier based in India distribute illegal narcotics elsewhere in the United States, there was no evidence she was profiting from the scheme.
“Segovia was losing money. In fact, she was hemorrhaging tens of thousands a year on her habit,” Tartakovsky wrote.
“The price she paid for her choices has been steep: termination from her job and the upending of her life as she knew it,” he added. “The government believes that her contrition is sincere and that she poses little risk of reoffending.”
That assessment was welcomed by Gasner, who said Tuesday that the sentence balances holding Segovia accountable with a federal conviction on her record, while recognizing the influence of her addiction and allowing her to “continue on a path to recovery.”
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office and judge both fully understood the scope of Ms. Segovia’s addiction, and took that into consideration,” he said. “We don’t want to diminish the scope of the opioid crisis in America … The conviction for a federal felony will send a strong message to the greater community.”
Segovia was originally charged with illegally importing fentanyl, but the charge was amended last August to substitute Tapentadol, another highly addictive opioid painkiller. In his sentencing memo, Tartakovsky wrote that it remains unclear how an initial Homeland Security field test of an intercepted shipment to Segovia indicated the presence of fentanyl, a finding that was overruled by a subsequent lab test.
“The prosecution was unable to determine how the Gemini analyzer, a sophisticated device that retails for $170,000, produced two false positives,” Tartakovsky stated.
Segovia was a civilian administrator for the police union for two decades before she was fired after the criminal charge surfaced in March 2023. When she entered her guilty plea last October, she admitted to a scheme that began with her procuring pills from a supplier in India to treat chronic back pain, and then agreeing to distribute Ambien and other drugs to other people in the country in exchange for free pills.
Segovia was found to have imported 17,400 doses of the opioid Tapentadol in a 17-month period between 2021 and 2022. Investigators state that in one instance, she used the police union’s UPS account to send an illicit package to a supplier in North Carolina.
A few days before she was charged, agents from Homeland Security Investigations reported seizing 283 Tapentadol pills from the police union’s headquarters in San Jose and 73 Tapentadol pills from from her home. The police union has said a third-party investigation found no evidence any union leaders or members knew about Segovia’s illegal activities; Tartakovsky corroborated that finding in his sentencing memo.
Segovia’s arrest was part of an ongoing 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.
Agents also examined Segovia’s WhatsApp account and reported finding hundreds of incriminating messages. She was interviewed by federal agents twice in the weeks before her arrest and initially pleaded ignorance on why her name was on the intercepted packages, and then later falsely claimed that a housekeeper had been impersonating her and sending the WhatsApp messages.