Posted on 09/23/2009 11:12:20 AM PDT by iowamark
(SPRINGFIELD, Mass.) A former postal service employee has pleaded guilty to stealing more than 30,000 DVDs that moved through a western Massachusetts post office...
Federal prosecutors say the movie rental company alerted Springfield post office officials that a suspiciously high number of DVDs were disappearing. As many as 100 movies a week were disappearing.
Weathers was arrested in February 2008 after investigators filmed him taking DVDs from packages and slipping them into his backpack.
He faces 10 months to 16 months in prison and restitution costs of about $38,000 at his Dec. 23 sentencing....
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
BTW, I knew a guy fired for a false claim on a travel voucher ~ barely more than $1.00 ($1.15 I believe). They really come down hard on folks at USPS.
I suspect the resitution is not really in line with what it would cost if the DVDs were handed back to Netflix for repackaging ~ odds are they'll simply destroy them since sorting them out would be prohibititvely expensive.
The restitution would be based on a computation of the cost of refilling an order ~ so it's just coincidental.
We had this problem with the music houses earlier. They'd mark "do not return" on pieces that couldn't be delivered. USPS could do nothing but discard them, and then the companies (Columbia, GBH, etc.) would complain about people going to the dump and getting free DVDs. USPS, though, charged a fee for "do not deliver" on that stuff ~ once they reorganized forwarding and return service to accommodate the mailorder music business (and some other mail order stuff). Exact accounting was needed. Still, if the companies wanted to make sure the returns were properly disposed of by chopping, slopping, burning and churning, they would need to take them back from USPS. That, too, had a separate fee.
This finally got so complex there were about 25 analysts at Headquarters assigned in 3 or 4 different departments working on just the mail order music company CD problem.
I did not get involved, so don't complain to me about it.
Netflix came along some years later and their problem was worse ~ again, their out of pocket costs for an undelivered DVD were probably les sthan $0.50, but the value imputed to the DVDs by the public were far higher.
Theft from curbside and rural delivery receptacles has always been a problem.
Unfortunately they were all “English Patient” and “Blame it on the Rain.”
Postmaster General: “Just imagine. An army of men in wool pants running through the neighborhood handing out DVDs of a young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk, door to door.”
Kramer: “Yeah! Ha ha.”
Postmaster General: “Well, it’s my job. And I’m pretty damn serious about it.
Check your facts before you throw racism into the mix.
He is WHITE, 100% WHITE. I know; I grew up with him.
It is his actual name.
I know; I grew up with him.
So, did you score any movies?
30,000? Sounds like the basis for a new movie: “30,000 First DVDs”.
“Hey, Ive never seen this one. I’ll take it.”
(Actually, it was only 3,000 DVDs, worth about $30,000, in about a year the guy stole.)
There is a trend in the media.
Whenever they refuse to show any photos or reveal any names, it's usually a black suspect. Whenever it's a white male, the name and photo of the suspect is practically plastered on every screen/newspaper/magazine in the world.
That is why I maintained my belief about the suspect, but I thank you for clearing the air.
Strange that the media wouldn't show his face in the articles since he is a white male.
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