Every week federal and local law enforcement authorities share news about the arrest, indictment or sentencing of people who assaulted mail carriers, stole mail, used the postal service as a conduit for smuggling and committed a host of other crimes involving the mail system. At the same time, the U.S. Postal Service is often the target of fraud by employees or other people.
The editors of PostalMag have compiled a couple of recent cases that USPS fans might find interesting because of the amount of money involved or the brazenness of the crime.
USPS overbilled for repair services
The owner of an Atlanta-based company that provided repair services to Postal Service facilities in five southern states was recently sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay restitution for defrauding the U.S. Postal Service.
Investigators for the organization’s Office of Inspector General found suspicious billing patterns from a subsidiary of Emcor Facilities Services, one of the Postal Service’s largest contractors. The USPS paid the subsidiary, GLR Group, more than $2.9 million for almost 2,450 work orders. Special agents found the subsidiary used subcontractors for a large part of the work and paid them lower rates than it reported on the invoices. It directed employees to doctor invoices to hide the outsourcing and inflate the cost of every job by about 25%, while falsely certifying it self-performed all the work. Some invoices were marked up by 40%.
Under normal rules, suppliers can mark up subcontractor invoices up to 10%.
Gregory Rehberg, owner of GLR Group, pleaded guilty to wire fraud for overbilling by nearly $739,000. U.S. attorneys reached a settlement agreement ordering the company to pay triple damages. Almost $3 million was returned directly to the U.S. Postal Service, according to summaries of the case posted by the OIG.
Postal Service employee stuffs checks in her pants
Two Alabama residents were sentenced earlier this year for a massive counterfeit check fraud scheme targeting the U.S. mail.
According to court documents, Brian Christopher Williams III, 25, and Kalaijha Tomeco Ranier Lewis, 29, schemed to defraud various federally insured banks and credit unions between November 2021 and June 2023. To carry out the fraud scheme, Williams recruited Lewis, who worked at a post office Mobile, to steal hundreds of high-value business checks and sell them to Williams. In turn, Williams and other coconspirators sold the stolen checks via an illicit online marketplace hosted on a Telegram channel called “Work Related.”
Fraudsters who purchased the stolen checks later counterfeited and negotiated many of them, causing substantial financial losses to multiple victims. In total, the value of the stolen checks posted to the “Work Related” channel exceeded $17 million.
In June 2023, U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigators began surveillance at the Saint Joseph Street post office in Mobile. On several occasions, agents saw Lewis manipulating the windowed envelopes of checks to see the amounts listed inside while she sorted mail. On June 23, 2023, agents confronted Lewis after capturing her on video stuffing a large stack of stolen checks into her pants before the end of her work shift. Lewis confessed that for several months, she stole business checks for Williams, who paid her $2,000 to $3,000 for each stack of stolen checks that she brought him.
That same day, agents arrested Williams at a gas station in Mobile, where he had arrived to purchase the stolen checks from Lewis. Agents seized more than $10,000 in cash from Williams’s pocket, which Williams admitted was proceeds of his fraud scheme. Agents also searched Williams’s car, seizing a loaded .40 caliber Glock pistol equipped with an extended magazine, ammunition, marijuana, and stolen checks valued at more than $417,000. Williams confessed to selling stolen checks to a coconspirator in Birmingham who marketed the checks for sale on Telegram.
Agents executed warrants to search cell phones and social media accounts belonging to Williams and Lewis, each of which contained extensive communications regarding the scheme. For example, on June 1, 2023, Williams messaged Lewis, “I need a load today!!!!!,” to which Lewis responded, “I done seen 7 [checks] since 6am.” Days later, Williams messaged Lewis about meeting up to purchase high-value stolen checks, emphasizing, “I need like 20k, 15k, 30k and up, majority of this whole damn load low asf, 1000-1600 are lows.”
Chief United States District Judge Jeffrey U. Beaverstock sentenced Williams and Lewis to serve 100 months and 60 months in federal prison, respectively. Following their release from prison, Williams and Lewis will each serve five-year terms of supervised release, during which time they will receive mental health evaluation and treatment, and will be subject to credit restrictions.
The court did not impose a fine, but Chief Judge Beaverstock ordered the defendants to pay $234,246.63 in victim restitution and a total of $300 in special assessments. The court also forfeited $10,773.53 in cash seized from Williams to the United States.
Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.
Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.
RELATED STORIES:
US Postal Service mail carrier shot by driver delivering Amazon packages
USPS mail delivery dispute goes before Supreme Court
The post U.S. Postal Service crime blotter appeared first on FreightWaves.
