California woman erroneously receives oxycodone, morphine, other drugs in Amazon package

GLENDALE, Calif. -- A Southern California woman received a startling and unwelcome surprise when she opened an Amazon package that was left on her front porch.

"It was on backorder and I was very happy when I came home from work last night and this box was waiting for me," the woman said.

But when she opened the box, she found something else inside besides ink: seven bottles of powerful narcotics, including oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine - along with an invoice from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"There's morphine, there's this, there's that, this is really dangerous stuff -- and there's a lot of them in there," she explained.

The woman did not wish to be identified.

She now wants to know how a bag with hundreds of powerful pills ended up in her Amazon order.

"Let me be clear, this package was not sent by DEA and these drugs were never in DEA custody," said Bill Bodner, special agent in charge in Los Angeles.

Bodner says a pharmacy in New York was disposing the drugs through a Texas pharmaceutical company, a process that needs to be approved by the government, which is why the DEA form was included.

But he suspects something went wrong in the delivery end.

"Likely, they used a third-party shipper to ship this package and somehow the shipping labels were switched at this third-party shipper," Bodner said.

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Authorities are not investigating how the drugs end up in an Amazon package at a home in California instead of its intended location in Texas.

An Amazon spokesperson denied a request to speak on camera and instead asked to reply through a written statement.

"These products are not allowed on Amazon and were not ordered on Amazon. This order was fulfilled by a third-party seller who was responsible for packaging and shipping the product directly to the customer. It appears that this seller incorrectly included products intended for someone else in the package. We are connecting with the seller to investigate how they made this error and will take appropriate next steps," Amazon said in the written statement.

The online retail giant may be answering questions from the DEA though, which has launched its own investigation.

"The type of drugs that were in this package, they are very dangerous. So we're going to make sure that there's no nefarious angle to this and hopefully we can just chalk it up to a mistake," Bodner said.

It's a mistake that may leave some Amazon customers wondering what could end up on their porch.