GREENFIELD TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A Florida woman tried to bribe a Pennsylvania state trooper who arrested her earlier this month near the border of Lackawanna and Susquehanna counties, authorities said.
Andrea Brooke Mayze, of Jacksonville, offered to pay Trooper Robert Mikulak if he let her run away because she did not want to go to jail on outstanding arrest warrants, state police said.
She was wanted in the state of Florida. A search of criminal records in Duval County, Florida, shows she has an outstanding warrant there for violating probation on an earlier case.
State police arrested her on June 1 because she gave a bogus name — Megan Shoults — to a state trooper who pulled her over on Interstate 81 in Greenfield Township for speeding and passing his cruiser on the right, according to a criminal complaint.
She's used a variation of that name before, according to criminal records in Florida. In 2022, she told a Jacksonville sheriff's deputy her name was Andrea Shoults to try and evade her active warrants, police reports there show. It didn't work then, either.
In Pennsylvania, state police grew suspicious of Mayze's given name because she could not provide basic identifying information, like the last four digits of her Social Security number. Several ID cards found inside Mayze's car betrayed her actual name.
She requested an ambulance for an undisclosed medical need and, while at a hospital in Scranton, tried to persuade Mikulak to let her go in exchange for payment. Instead, Mikulak put Mayze in the back of his cruiser and drove her to booking and arraignment.
Mayze is charged with bribery, false identification, and flight to avoid apprehension. She also various several drug charges because state police said they found suspected narcotics in her car and because she allegedly tried to smuggle drugs into the Lackawanna County Prison that she hid inside her body.
She remained at the county jail on Wednesday and has a preliminary hearing scheduled for June 24.
