Employee’s Smuggling of Drugs into Missouri Prison Leads to 87-Month Prison Sentence

ST. LOUIS – U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey on Tuesday sentenced a former state prison employee to 87 months in prison for smuggling contraband into that prison.

Steven M. Reminger, 53, was an electronics technician at the Eastern Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri on May 25, 2022, when U.S. Postal Inspectors caught him with a package that contained $4,000 in cash and packages containing fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, K2, THC edibles, marijuana, knives and cell phones.

The investigation began when inmates alerted prison officials about drug smuggling after a number of inmate deaths. One told a Missouri Department of Corrections investigator that Reminger had drugs mailed to a Post Office box in Farmington, Missouri under a fake name. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service learned that Reminger had received about 12 packages between Nov. 13, 2021, and May 24, 2022, at that P.O. box. Reminger told Postal Inspectors that the $4,000 in the final package was his compensation. He said he never opened the individual packages and didn’t know what was inside. He acknowledged that it was “possible” the packages he brought in contained something that contributed to the inmate overdoses, but said “ignorance is bliss.” 

Reminger turned over $15,000 in cash that he’d made from smuggling. He used some of the rest of the money to buy a dune buggy and two trailers.

Reminger pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in April to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute controlled substances and one count of attempting to possess with the intent to distribute controlled substances.

The Missouri Department of Corrections Office of Professional Standards, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Missouri State Highway Patrol investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Rebar prosecuted the case.