Naples woman arrested for mailing drugs into prison

NAPLES, Fla. — The woman who told deputies on Tuesday that she babysat a toddler because of her father’s drug problem was arrested Wednesday for allegedly smuggling drugs into the Collier County Jail, according to the Collier County Sheriff’s Department.

Stephanie Tompkins, 27, has been accused of mailing drugs to inmate Paul Ontano, 36, since last year.

Police reports show that officers noticed suspicious activity last September when they received word that Ontano requested Tompkins to mail him drugs.

Tompkins told Ontano she mailed him two greeting cards with four spots on them and to call her to find out where the drugs are located once he received the cards.

Deputies believed that prescription drugs had been diluted and the liquid was laced onto the cards for Ontano to ingest.

Police seized the cards and withheld Ontano’s mail to inspect them for contrabands.

Upon further investigation, it was revealed last October that Tompkins used a fake address when mailing Ontano the drugs because the address Tompkins used didn’t show up in the database.

Detectives then created an authentic looking version of the envelopes and cards with the hopes of making Ontano believe he was receiving the real cards with the drugs on them, triggering Ontano to call Tompkins about the drugs.

After the fake cards were mailed to him, Ontano conducted a three-way phone call between his mother and Tompkins, which police monitored, confirming that Tompkins was intentionally mailing drugs to Otano.

Deputies then entered Otano’s prison cell and confiscated the envelopes from underneath his mattress. The envelopes were placed into evidence and sent to the to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for testing.

The FDLE lab reports were completed in April and revealed that buprenorhine, a substance used for pain and opioid addiction, was found on the cards.

Tompkins is currently in custody with a $5,000 bond and facing a charge of smuggling contrabands into a county detention facility.