Ex-Mo. prison employee admits to smuggling drugs, knives into prison

By Ethan Erickson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS — A former employee at a prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri, pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to smuggling drugs and weapons into the facility to deliver them to an inmate serving time for a St. Louis shooting.

Steven M. Reminger, 53, an electronics technician at the Eastern Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center at the time, came under scrutiny after a number of overdoses, according to a plea agreement. Inmates reached out to prison officials and told them that Reminger was smuggling drugs into the prison.

A United States Postal inspector learned that Reminger had a post office box in Farmington, Missouri, at which he received 12 packages between late 2021 and mid-2022. He used the name David Vale to receive the deliveries.

When Reminger picked up the final package in May 2022, postal inspectors interviewed him, during which time he consented to a search of the package. Inside it, authorities found $4,000 in cash, fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, K2, THC edibles, marijuana, knives and cellphones in four vacuum-sealed packages.

Reminger said the cash was his pay for bringing the packages into the prison, but he said he never opened the packages. “Ignorance is bliss,” Reminger told authorities, admitting that he remained “deliberately ignorant” to the packages’ contents. He said he had gotten six or seven similar packages over the previous year.

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Reminger indicated he was sent the packages under the direction of inmate Belvin Williams, a man serving 120 years for a north St. Louis shooting, according to a plea agreement. Reminger would deliver the packages to Williams inside the prison.

He said he made no more than $50,000 from the scheme, and he turned over $15,000 to investigators.

Reminger is scheduled to be sentenced in July, and each of the two charges carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, a $1 million fine or both.

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