Navy Couple Who Ran Fentanyl on America’s Flagship Carrier Had the Nerve to Blame a Dead Sailor

A young sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln swallowed a fake oxycodone pill and never woke up again.

The people who sold him that pill were the master-at-arms responsible for chasing drugs off the ship and her husband.

Instead of coming clean, the couple tried pinning his death on the sailor they had just killed.

The Master-at-Arms Who Was Supposed to Stop This

Bailey Szramowski, 29, and his wife, Johnnese Poomaihealani, 25, both of Hawaii, pleaded guilty on September 15 to conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.

Poomaihealani was not some outsider running pills onto base.

She served as a master-at-arms, petty officer third class, the Navy's own onboard police, tasked with keeping drugs off the ship she and her husband were using to sell them.

Prosecutors say Szramowski ordered counterfeit oxycodone and Percocet pills through the mail to a post office box in Coronado and collected payment through CashApp.

He sold them to fellow sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln, a Nimitz-class nuclear supercarrier, during a deployment that ran 208 consecutive days at sea with 200 of them inside a combat zone tied to operations against Iran.

The Navy sent that crew into hostile waters, and somewhere below deck a husband and wife were running a pharmacy in fentanyl.

In December 2022, Szramowski handed 10 of those pills to a young sailor identified in court papers only as A.N.

On January 3, 2023, A.N. was found dead in San Leandro, California, of acute fentanyl intoxication.

A Cover-Up That Started Before the Body Was Cold

Roughly 10 days after A.N. died, Szramowski sold three more pills to a second sailor, identified as C.L.

C.L. overdosed and survived only because someone got to him with Narcan in time.

That should have ended it.

Instead, prosecutors say Szramowski and Poomaihealani told C.L. to lie to investigators and claim the pills came from A.N., the sailor already in a grave.

Szramowski went further, telling A.N.'s family that he "might go down for murder" and asking them to delete their text messages with their dead son.

The family said no.

Homeland Security Investigations agents in San Diego, working through a fentanyl task force stood up in August 2022, built the case that finally caught up with them.

Szramowski was originally charged with distributing fentanyl resulting in death and now faces up to 40 years in prison and a five million dollar fine.

Poomaihealani faces up to 20 years and a one million dollar fine.

Both are scheduled to be sentenced on December 11 before a federal judge in San Diego.

This is not the first time a Navy warship has doubled as a drug corridor.

The USS Ronald Reagan has done this twice – a fatal fall exposed an LSD ring that saw dozens of crew members punished, and years earlier sailors from that same carrier's nuclear reactor department pleaded guilty to running a pill-distribution ring.

The pattern is the same every time: young sailors, thousands of miles from home, and drugs that somehow make it past the gate anyway.

The Border That Let This Onto a Nuclear Carrier

Nobody had to smuggle raw fentanyl onto a Nimitz-class carrier to kill one of its sailors.

They just had to press it into a fake oxycodone pill and mail it to a P.O. box in Coronado, because the raw ingredients are already flooding across an unsecured southern border.

Fentanyl sold on American streets, and apparently on American warships, traces back to Chinese precursor chemicals shipped to Mexican cartel labs and then run north, a supply chain congressional researchers have documented for years without Washington shutting it down.

If cartel-pressed pills can reach a master-at-arms standing watch over a nuclear supercarrier deployed near Iran, they can reach any base, any barracks, any American city.

It starts at a border that has let this poison get common enough that a Navy cop could get her hands on it without a second thought.

Sources:

• Southern District of California, "Former U.S. Navy Sailors Plead Guilty to Selling Fentanyl-Laden Pills to Servicemembers Assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln," U.S. Department of Justice, September 15, 2026.
• Stars and Stripes, "Former Navy sailors admit to deadly fentanyl sales tied to USS Abraham Lincoln," Stars and Stripes, September 15, 2026.
• Military Times, "Former service members admit to dealing fentanyl that killed USS Abraham Lincoln sailor," Military Times, September 15, 2026.
• Stars and Stripes, "Sailor's fatal fall exposed drug ring aboard aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan," Stars and Stripes, June 25, 2026.
• Navy Times, "Two sailors in aircraft carrier drug ring plead guilty to distribution charges," Navy Times, January 10, 2019.
• Congressional Research Service, "China Primer: Illicit Fentanyl and China's Role," Library of Congress, 2026.