Basehor ? A Basehor resident who recently alerted police after finding an unexpected package on her doorstep has supplied vital information in a drug investigation.

Basehor Police Chief Lloyd Martley said police departments in Basehor, Lenexa, Shawnee and Kansas City, Kan., are pursuing the arrest of a 36-year-old Shawnee resident suspected of orchestrating the transfer of drugs and receipt of drugs through the mail.

Martley said his department received a call Friday from a Basehor woman who reported FedEx had delivered a strange package to her house. The package had her address on it, but a company name was displayed on the box.

Inside the box, Martley said, the woman found a large sealed bucket. Deciding something was amiss, she contacted police, who began tracing the return address information.

“It was a totally bogus company,” Martley said.

The address listed for the fake sending company belonged to a junior college in Glendale, Ariz., and the phone number was a Phoenix listing.

Police found 14 pounds of marijuana inside the five-gallon bucket. The department contacted FedEx and learned about the three other police departments’ efforts to stop drug deliveries from the same fake company to residences in their cities. Martley said each package was formatted to look like two companies exchanging cleaning supplies. The packages were usually intercepted after drop-off before homeowners could discover them, he said.

“The suspect would wait and watch the delivery being made, and then he’d grab the package,” Martley said. “But with this woman, she wasn’t home, and her neighbors were outside, so he couldn’t take the box.”

Martley said FedEx reported two additional deliveries were slated for nearby residences before police stopped the process. The marijuana in the five-gallon bucket alone was worth about $26,800 if sold on the street, Martley said, and if the two other deliveries had been successful, an additional $53,600 in drugs would have entered the area.

“This resident really did the right thing reporting the package to the police,” Martley said.

In total, 12 to 14 packages were delivered from the false company to addresses in the Kansas City metropolitan area, Martley said.

The case has been turned over to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the attorney general’s office, Martley said. No arrests have been made.