{"id":207272,"date":"2026-03-26T19:03:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/207272\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T19:03:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:03:17","slug":"trial-date-set-for-miami-dade-deputy-accused-of-trying-to-smuggle-ecstasy-onto-cruise-nbc-6-south-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/207272\/","title":{"rendered":"Trial date set for Miami-Dade deputy accused of trying to smuggle Ecstasy onto cruise \u2013 NBC 6 South Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Miami-Dade Sheriff&#8217;s deputy who was allegedly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcmiami.com\/news\/local\/deputy-busted-trying-to-smuggle-mdma-pills-in-candy-bags-onto-cruise-ship-mdso\/3524750\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.nbcmiami.com\/news\/local\/deputy-busted-trying-to-smuggle-mdma-pills-in-candy-bags-onto-cruise-ship-mdso\/3524750\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">caught with dozens of Ecstasy pills at PortMiami last year<\/a> was back in court Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Deputy Francisco Melo was arrested in January 2025 and charged with attempting to smuggle 60 MDMA pills onto a cruise ship that was hosting a music festival.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators said Melo concealed the drugs inside Skittles candy bags.<\/p>\n<p>Melo was arrested amid an undercover operation before he could board the cruise ship.<\/p>\n<p>In court Thursday, it was learned Melo passed a drug test, and the judge set a June trial date.<\/p>\n<p>Melo, who had been with the department for six years but was relieved of duty after his arrest, had pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Miami-Dade Sheriff&#8217;s deputy who was allegedly caught with dozens of Ecstasy pills at PortMiami last year was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,373],"class_list":["post-207272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-miami-dade-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}