Woman Who Bought A Yoga Mat Receives 20,000 Fake Oxycodone Pills Instead

When the mail carrier stopped by a South Carolina woman’s home Saturday afternoon, she thought the yoga mat she’d ordered online had arrived. Instead, the Rock Hill resident got a rude surprise.

The box was reportedly full of illegal narcotic pills.

The 20,000 counterfeit oxycodone tablets were worth about $400,000, WSOC-TV reported. There were so many pills stuffed inside the box “they were spilling from the packaging,” the unidentified woman said.

The woman called the police, who promptly launched an investigation.

Officials told the Rock Hill Herald that the pills were likely made in Mexico and shipped from California. The drugs were apparently bound for the woman’s former address, which is now vacant. Due to a misspelling, the package was flagged by the post office and redirected to the woman’s current address.

Marvin Brown, the commander of the drug enforcement unit of the York County Sheriff’s Office, told WSOC-TV that traffickers often send illegal drugs to addresses they know will be clear of people so they can pick up the contraband. These include vacant residences and “homes where people have gone to work for the day.”

A significant number of drugs are mailed in the U.S. annually. In the last 12 months, the U.S. Postal Service seized over 37,000 pounds of illegal drugs, most of it marijuana, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Although recreational marijuana has been legalized in many states, sending the drug through the mail remains a crime.