San Diego Man Pleads Guilty to Sending Methamphetamine Through the Mail

BOSTON – A San Diego man pleaded guilty today in federal court in Boston to distributing more than 30 packages of methamphetamine through the mail. 

Leonard Leseman, 58, pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute methamphetamine.  U.S. District Court Judge Leo S. Sorokin scheduled sentencing for Sept. 14, 2017. 

From approximately 2011 through October 2013, Leseman supplied methamphetamine to co-defendant Robert Annette, sending packages from San Diego to Annette’s residences in Somerville and Provincetown.  In 2012, a Postal Inspector, conducting a routine drug interdiction, located a suspicious package sent by Leseman addressed to a fictitious name at Annette’s Somerville residence. When the Inspector attempted to deliver the package, Annette refused receipt. From then on, Annette arranged for a network of friends to receive the packages.  In total, Leseman mailed more than 30 packages containing methamphetamine to various addresses provided by Annette. During the investigation, packages containing methamphetamine that Leseman sent to customers in Washington, D.C., and Carnegie, Penn., were seized.

Leseman and Annette communicated via text message to discuss the logistics for orders, shipments and payments.  For example, regarding a package that Leseman sent Annette, Leseman advised him: “You’ll see 3 blind mice eating ice cream.”  After Leseman mailed the package from San Diego, Postal Inspectors in Massachusetts seized the package and opened it pursuant to a search warrant.  Inside the package were three toy mice and an ice cream maker with four ounces of methamphetamine hidden inside.

Annette and three other individuals, Steven Marszalkowski of Provincetown; Lawrence Ligocki, of Chelsea; and Scott Hill, of Somerville, previously pleaded guilty to various charges in connection with this investigation.  Scott Hill was sentenced on April 12, 2017, to 42 months in prison.

Acting United States Attorney William D. Weinreb; Shelly Binkowski, Inspector in Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Boston Field Division; and Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division, made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorneys James E. Arnold and Craig E. Estes of Weinreb’s Narcotics and Money Laundering Unit are prosecuting the case.