Little Falls Woman Charged After 222 Grams of Meth Found in Her Car

A deputy found about 222 grams of suspected methamphetamine under the passenger seat of a Little Falls woman’s car during a traffic stop in McLeod County on Aug. 28, according to the complaint.

Mallory Marie Perowitz, 37, is charged in McLeod County District Court with first-degree drug possession and two counts of fifth-degree drug possession, all felonies. She also faces a misdemeanor count of driving under the influence of a controlled substance. The complaint was filed Nov. 3. A judge issued a nationwide warrant for her arrest.

According to the complaint, a deputy driving south on County Road 7 at about 1:43 a.m. saw a car cross the centerline. The car was registered to Perowitz and its registration was listed as suspended. The deputy stopped it and found Perowitz driving with a man in the passenger seat.

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The deputy smelled a strong chemical odor in the car and saw that Perowitz had bloodshot eyes with very dilated pupils, odd mouth movements and a dry mouth. She said she had picked up the passenger in Silver Lake and was taking him to Cedar Mills as a favor to a friend. The passenger told the deputy that Perowitz was picking him up to hang out and that he believed he had called her. The car appeared to be lived in, with clothing, bags, laundry baskets, food containers and bottled drinks inside, the complaint says.

Perowitz did field sobriety tests and was arrested on suspicion of DWI. In her sweater pocket, the deputy found a folded piece of unburnt tin foil with something hard inside. She said she found it on the ground. When the deputy challenged that, she said, “I think there might be...” and agreed when he suggested fentanyl. A lighter was in her shorts pocket.

The passenger said everything left in the car belonged to Perowitz. In a search of the car, the deputy found two cannabis vaporizer cartridges, a glass pipe with burnt cannabis residue, a radio frequency detector and a credit or debit card in someone else’s name. Under the passenger seat, he found a large amount of a white crystalline substance double-bagged in two sandwich bags. It was suspected to be methamphetamine and later weighed at 7.85 ounces, or 222.5 grams. The deputy then arrested the passenger.

In Perowitz’s purse, the deputy found a glass pipe, many pieces of burned tin foil, a container of white powder suspected to be fentanyl, another THC vape cartridge, a bag of suspected methamphetamine and one and a half gabapentin pills, according to the complaint. Testing found 0.62 grams of methamphetamine and 0.4 grams of fentanyl in the purse, 0.27 grams of fentanyl in the foil from her sweater pocket and 0.08 grams of fentanyl on a burned piece of foil from the purse.

The complaint says Perowitz has a prior conviction.