DOC employee charged with sending inmates drug-laced song lyrics, motivational quotes

(FOX 9) - A woman who worked for the Minnesota Department of Corrections is facing charges alleging she sent drug-laced mail to prisoners.

Grace Marie Telfer, 24, who worked at the woman's prison in Shakopee, allegedly sent mail laced with the synthetic drug K2 to inmates at a correctional facility in Oak Park Heights, according to court filings from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. 

According to the statement of probable cause, Telfer conspired with former inmates in the scheme, in which she allegedly sprayed the drug onto printer paper, then printed out song lyrics or wrote "motivational quotes" on the sheets before mailing them to inmates via the United States Postal Service.

The contraband was contained in envelopes marked as "Legal Mail" with the return address of law firms, so it would be delivered to the inmates quicker, according to the statement. 

Investigators grew suspicious when they determined that while the return addresses were in Minnetonka and Minneapolis, the mail had been postmarked in St. Paul. The statement says a police K9 later detected narcotics on an envelope.

Investigators then began to monitor phone calls, and identified Telfer in several conversations using an alias of "Gina" and talking "openly" about shipping the drugs to inmates, for which she allegedly received payments of $3,500 via Cash App.

Telfer has been charged with sending contraband into a state prison, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.