NYC Mailman Accused Of Stealing More Than $1M In Tax Refunds In Years-Long Scheme

Is there some kind of greedy bug sweeping through the New York City mail system? Okay, probably not, but for the second time in two months a postal employee has been charged by federal prosecutors with taking part in a scheme to pad their own pockets. The most recent case involves a mail carrier who allegedly stole more than $1 million in tax refunds.

The Associated Press reports that a 36-year-old Brooklyn man was charged with conspiracy and theft of government funds for his part in “delivering” bogus tax refunds to himself.

Who the hell is cashing them?

According to investigators, the mail carrier and his accomplices would file false tax returns using Social Security numbers for Puerto Rico residents they believed were unlikely to file on their own. These returns used addresses along the postal employee’s delivery route in the Bronx, allowing him to easily intercept the refund check

To answer your question..

You sign the fake tax return, you sign the check...

Bingo!!!

I worked for the USPS for many years. There are overhead watch platforms directly over the letter and flat cases in most mail processing facilities.

I was told of one clerk who got caught taking money out of letters just shortly before I started. The amount of stolen money they found in his locker was pitiful. So he lost a well-paying job for a few thousand bucks. But the facts are if certain postal customers do not receive expected gifts or presents, the postal inspectors are alerted.

If the miscreant is constantly committing theft i.e. sets a pattern, it's not too difficult to trace the activity to a particular postal unit. Then it's just a matter of the postal inspectors watching the likely types who had access to letters or packages.

There are doors in all processing facilities where the PIs come out of when they seize someone. The clerks who were present at the time they caught this guy said the PIs burst out of quite a few of those doors to nab the guy. So they had been watching his case for a period of time observing him taking money out of letters.

He must have been fairly good at it or by himself, because when I used to throw letters there were always plenty of other people around. How he could open a letter and take the money out over a period of years without being observed is a mystery to me.

It came out later they guy's wife was taking most of his paycheck and leaving him little money for himself. He said he wanted to have a little cash to spend on himself.

On an ending note, as an ex postal worker, NEVER!!! send cash through the mail. Not only could it be stolen, paper money could be destroyed or lost in the letter sorting machines. Send checks or money orders.

"Xmas time"

One of the last jobs I had before retiring was doing something called Hand Cancel. That meant I had to cancel stamps that couldn't go through the machines. I also had to repair torn or mangled letters and parcels. That usually meant there were bulky or large objects in them that could mess up the letter sorting machines. There were people whose specific job was to extract these "chunky" letters from the mailstream before they reached the letter sorting machines.

Of course during holidays the "chunky" letter volume grew. Christmas was the worst. The most distressing part of that to me was the numbers of torn and mangled letters with cash or gift cards in them it was my job to piece together and send on to the customers.

Unfortunately, many people would send cash and gift cards through the mail that got missed by the letter extractors and mangled on the letter sorting machines. Frequently these torn letters would have no return address. And many times people would put fragile objects in cheap, thin, non-machinable envelopes that were easily torn on machines.

So often I had to send pieces of mail that I could not piece together and figure out the return address or the intended customer with the cash and money to a postal facility in Atlanta that got all the unmailable pieces of mail across the country. What they did with the gift cards and cash I have no idea.

But I urge all people to NEVER!!! put cash and bulky objects in envelopes. Never use flimsy envelopes that might be easily torn and mangled on a letter sorting machine. If you send money, always write a check or money order. And ALWAYS!!! put your return address on the envelopes you mail.

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