In 2014, Linwood R. Nelson Jr. — a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier assigned to a residential delivery route in Woodstock, Maryland — was charged with and later pleaded guilty to federal counts of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin and diverting drug parcels from the mail, following a joint investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Maryland State Police. Between July and September 2014, Nelson accepted cash from a heroin-distribution conspiracy in exchange for intercepting parcels shipped to a specific address on his own route, an address he had provided to co-conspirators and instructed them to use with false addressee names so the drug packages would be camouflaged among ordinary mail. Co-conspirators coordinated each delivery by text, describing the color of the box and the phony name on the label so Nelson could pull exactly the right parcel out of the mail stream and walk it directly to the ring instead of the door. Chief U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake of the District of Maryland sentenced Nelson to 30 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release. Among the households on his route was a family whose children had grown up waving at the same carrier every morning, never knowing their street had become a quiet import lane for heroin.