Correctional officer smuggled drugs and phones into Mat-Su prison, federal charges say

A correctional officer is accused of smuggling drugs and cellphones into the Goose Creek Correctional Center for about a year, according to federal charges.

In total, 43-year-old Angela Lincoln, profited nearly $30,000 from the transactions, a charging document filed in her case said.

Lincoln worked at the medium-security men’s prison located near Wasilla from 2014 until mid-2020, the charges said.

She had been named the prison’s employee of the year, according to a 2018 social media post from the Department of Corrections. But in December of 2020, she entered into an agreement with the Alaska Police Standards Council where she permanently surrendered her correctional officer certification.

On Monday, she was charged with a felony count of bribery and conspiracy.

According to the charges, Lincoln worked with a man serving a 100-year sentence for murder at Goose Creek Correctional Center to sell Suboxone to others in the prison. Suboxone is classified as an opioid but is also prescribed and used as a treatment for opioid addiction.

The man was part of a religious organization in the prison that allowed him to collect money from inmate’s outside associates and family to fund “religious programming and feasts” at the prison, the charges said.

Lincoln supplied him with a burner cellphone and he arranged for someone outside of the prison to supply her with drugs and cellphones, which she would then smuggle into facility, the charges said. In turn, the charges said the man and his incarcerated associates would sell the contraband to others in prison.

Those who purchased the drugs would arrange for people on the outside to pay the man’s “network of non-inmate associates and family members,” the charges said. Those people would eventually deliver the money to two people who then paid Lincoln, the charges said. People involved on the outside were told to lie about the payments.

From about July of 2019 until June of 2020, Lincoln was paid nearly $30,000, the charges said.

She is scheduled to appear in federal court Tuesday for an arraignment and detention hearing, court records show.

Two months earlier, an officer at the Anchorage Correctional Center was arrested for allegedly smuggling drugs into the facility.