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A Los Angeles duo has been sentenced to 17 years in federal prison after Evansville drug investigators discovered 40 pounds of crystal methamphetamine stored in Cheetos bags, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana announced Friday.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Young imposed the sentence on Natasha Gardner, 47, on April 16. Goldie Flenor, 37, was sentenced last August. Both will face 204 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release, an Attorney’s Office spokesperson confirmed Monday.
Garnder and Flenor had both pleaded guilty to attempted possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
According to court documents, on March 5, 2025, UPS notified the Evansville Vanderburgh County Drug Task Force and the Drug Enforcement Administration Evansville Resident Office about a suspicious, damaged package coming from West Chester, Ohio.
UPS employees, in following company policy, opened the package and found five Cheetos bags holding 20.97 pounds of plastic-wrapped, vacuum-sealed bags of crystal meth.
Not long afterward, a second package of Cheetos bags was identified, and it carried almost 20 pounds of meth.
Law enforcement officers took both packages and delivered them to their intended addresses. The officers then saw Gardner and Flenor arrive in a white van and retrieve the packages, a news release states.
Officers attempted to conduct a traffic stop, but the pair refused to comply, according to the Attorney’s Office.
The duo fled at a high rate of speed before crashing head-on into a Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office patrol car, the Attorney’s Office said. Flenor and Gardner tried to continue their escape on foot, but law enforcement quickly apprehended them.
“The defendants brazenly disguised 40 pounds of meth in Cheetos bags and used a commercial delivery company to transport it for them,” Tom Wheeler, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said in the Friday press release. “Their scheme failed, these drugs were interdicted, and they will spend years in federal prison. We will continue to work with our partners to dismantle trafficking operations that attempt to poison our communities with devastating drugs like meth, no matter how they are disguised.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Wheatley prosecuted the case.
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