Postal worker sells USPS key, then hundreds of pieces of mail are stolen, feds say

A former U.S. Postal Service employee is headed to prison after federal prosecutors said she sold a USPS key for $2,500 — resulting in hundreds of pieces of mail stolen in Alabama.

While a mail carrier at a post office in Prichard, the woman stole a USPS “arrow” key and sold it to a “co-conspirator” in exchange for cash in October 2022, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Alabama.

This co-conspirator used the key, which opens all the blue USPS collection boxers in a specific region, to steal mail, prosecutors said.

Months before the postal worker was indicted on federal charges, she texted the individual in March 2023 that stealing the key caused her “so much anxiety” and that the Prichard post office had become “very strict,” according to the attorney’s office.

That month, the woman told law enforcement she “did ‘illegal stuff’ and lied about it to federal agents,” the attorney’s office said.

Investigators also learned the woman deposited counterfeit checks — ones “derived” from actual checks belonging to others that had been stolen from the mail — into her bank account, prosecutors said.

Now, the 32-year-old Mobile resident has been sentenced to two years and six months in prison on charges of conspiracy, bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, and theft of a USPS key, the attorney’s office announced in a Feb. 23 news release.

A judge has also ordered her to pay $48,334.10 in restitution to victims and $500 in special assessments, prosecutors said.

McClatchy News contacted the woman’s court-appointed defense attorneys for comment on Feb. 26 and didn’t receive an immediate response.

The woman is appealing her conviction and sentencing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, according to a notice filed Feb. 24, one day after she was sentenced.

She was convicted in the case in November, according to the attorney’s office.

At trial, multiple people — whose names and banking information were on the stolen checks used to create the counterfeit checks that the woman was convicted of depositing into her bank account — appeared to testify, prosecutors said.

A few months before prosecutors said the woman stole and sold the USPS key, she deposited two “counterfeited and forged” checks totaling nearly $14,000 in an ATM in June 2022, according to two examples included in a superseding indictment.

In November 2022, law enforcement found her co-conspirator stealing mail from USPS collection boxes near the Bel Air Mall, prosecutors said.

The man agreed to plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft in February 2023, court records show.

He’s scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in Mobile on June 7.

Prichard is about 5 miles northwest of Mobile.

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