Despite several high-profile arrests, drug smuggling at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic remains a challenge for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, with “happy cards” a popular way narcotics are being smuggled into the jail, according to court records.
A pair of former Pitchess inmates were taken into custody early Tuesday morning in connection with a lengthy investigation.
Brian Tyrone Clary, 41, a Porter Ranch resident, was arrested on suspicion of bringing narcotics into a jail and conspiracy to commit the same crime. Deputies also arrested Thomas Armstrong, a 33-year-old, in Orange County this morning. A third suspect, Thomas Rice, is in now in state custody in Florida, according to a Sheriff’s Department official who asked to remain unnamed due to undercover work.
A happy card is a jail term used to describe a greeting card or some other inmate correspondence, which is laced or saturated with a controlled substance, or has a controlled substance within the card or envelope, according to investigators.
The staff at the Pitchess Detention Center’s mail room have narcotics-identification kits, “which are used to test for the presence of methamphetamine,” according to a sworn statement from a detective seeking the call log of an inmate’s illegal cellphone for evidence of the shipments.
In the search warrant request from the Custody Investigative Services — Organized Crime Task Force, a detective says that inmates will attempt to have the happy cards sent into a jail from someone out of custody, a “facilitator,” who gets paid to use the U.S. Mail to ship the drugs.
Knowing this happens, Pitchess staff regularly use the kits and tested six letters in February, and “all six of the letters presumptively tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine,” according to the detective’s report.
“Based on the presumptive testing, a crime report was written for each of the intercepted happy cards,” per the report. The return address for the letters all went to locations in Rosamond, a desert town about 90 minutes north of the Santa Clarita Valley, including a U.S. Post Office on Rosamond Boulevard.
Detectives confirmed the presence of methamphetamine on all six letters when the LASD lab results came back July 15.
Investigators then tracked who was being called on the phone and who was calling it, according to the investigation in court records, starting with the recipients of the letters.
All the letters had the same “Dungeons & Dragons”-themed stamp, which appeared to be from the same sheet, leading the investigator to believe based on that — and that all the return addresses were nearby — the same person mailed all six letters.
The inmates in question, who have not been charged in the investigation as of this story, made calls to the same number, which the detective linked back to an inmate who was in custody in the same dorm in January, prior to the mailing.
Detectives also managed to intercept the suspects’ communications about the relative prices of “freeze” and “K-2,” referring to methamphetamine and synthetic cannabis, according to the detective’s report.
The payments, per the detective, are taken care of using smartphone apps. The deliveries are coordinated via phone, using letters, according to the search warrant.
The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office did not have information immediately available regarding a case, or charges connected to the investigation.
Unrelated arrests
The Sheriff’s Department has made several investigations with help from federal officials in their efforts to stem the flow of narcotics into local jails.
Federal officials announced in April that a former Pitchess Detention Center deputy previously named in a 26-count indictment from the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office was now also facing charges from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Michael Meiser, 40, pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute heroin, according to a news release Aug. 14 from the Department of Justice. Federal officials said Meiser’s actions were in support of the Mexican Mafia’s narcotics trafficking in jails.
He admitted to receiving $15,000 for picking up the drugs in a can of Pringles at a Valencia gas station and then sneaking them into the Castaic jail where he worked, according to the DOJ.
In April 2024, Meiser conspired with inmates to smuggle drugs into the jail — part of the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center complex — in exchange for cash and payments via the Cash App digital wallet that inmates sent to one of Meiser’s relatives, according to his plea agreement.
He’s facing a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison when he’s sentenced in September.
