Federal inmate in Minnesota gets 2 more years for trying to smuggle in drug-soaked paper

Eight months shy of being set free, a federal inmate in east-central Minnesota has had another two years tacked onto his time for attempting to smuggle paper soaked in meth into the facility.

Nickolas W. Mihelic, 39, incarcerated at the federal lockup in Sandstone, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis after pleading guilty to two counts of attempting to obtain contraband in prison. The sentence also includes three years of supervision upon his release.

Prisons in Minnesota are racing to keep up with a new chapter in contraband smuggling: mail soaked with synthetic and liquid narcotics in a bid to evade detection.

State and federal corrections officials, both in Minnesota and nationally, have been considering new technologies and prison policies to counter what they say is a trend that has emerged in the past year. In the meantime, federal prosecutors are increasingly building cases against people such as Mihelic caught trying to mail methamphetamine or other drugs laced into the ink and paper of the mail itself — all while trying to prosecute more traditional means of drug smuggling.

A spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons declined to go into specifics about security procedures but did say the agency takes a multifaceted approach that includes walk-through metal detectors, whole-body imaging devices and other enhanced internal measures.

Mihelic was convicted in Missouri for dealing methamphetamine and has been in federal custody since September 2015. During his incarceration, "he has reported using a variety of drugs," the prosecution wrote to the court a week before sentencing.

He had been scheduled to be released on Oct. 17, 2023, but Thursday's sentence stretches that to late 2025.

According to Mihelic's guilty plea and court documents:

On Feb. 23, 2022, and two weeks later, Mihelic had someone outside the prison mail him pieces of paper that were saturated with liquid methamphetamine. However, Sandstone prison mailroom staff seized the papers before they could reach him and replaced them with undoctored papers.

"Mr. Mihelic schemed with an unindicted coconspirator to mail him the drug saturated papers under another inmate's name and ID number," read a prosecution filing ahead of sentencing. "Even though he was restricted from email and telephone communication due to a positive urinalysis test at [the federal prison in Texarkana, Texas], Mr. Mihelic bypassed this ... by using other inmates' phone and email accounts to communicate with his co-conspirator and organize the drug delivery."

After the mailings were intercepted, Mihelic contacted the outside source "complaining about how something was wrong with the pages he received," the prosecution filing continued.

A week after the second mailing was detected, Mihelic confessed to prison officials and added that he tried the same scheme while in the Texarkana prison, according to prosecutors.

He also said the drugs were intended only for his personal use, however several other inmates were disciplined for lending him their phone and email accounts.

"Introducing drugs into correctional facilities fuels an illicit drug market inside the prison," the prosecution's presentence filing cautioned. "Also, ingesting drugs like methamphetamine is inherently dangerous, particularly so after inmates undergo a period of sobriety or for those enrolled in medication-assisted treatment."

Star Tribune staff writer Stephen Montemayor contributed to this report.