Investigative Case Highlights

Postal Service contracts can be complex. EMCOR, a major Postal Service contractor, assigns service calls to subsidiaries that perform work for the agency — a good part of it maintenance and repairs at postal facilities. These subsidiaries may subcontract the work with up to a 10 percent markup, provided they disclose it. But that doesn’t always happen, and that’s where our contract fraud investigators come in.

You might be surprised to know that many of our contract fraud investigations start when our special agents detect discrepancies in the Postal Service’s massive facilities portfolio. That’s how this case began: our special agents found a contractor’s invoices just didn’t add up.

The U.S. Postal Service moves 44 percent of the world’s mail and despite its massive size, it must rely on thousands of contracts worth billions of dollars each year. The sheer volume and huge dollar value of these contracts also make USPS susceptible to fraud. This makes the oversight work of our Contract Fraud Investigations Division a high priority in our mission to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse within the Postal Service.

Many contract fraud investigations end up in civil court, and the law allows victims and the government to seek multiple damages under the False Claims Act. The added penalties — sometimes as much as three times the amount defrauded — are meant to act as a deterrent should contractors think about defrauding anyone again.

A postmaster at a post office in Connecticut is serving a four-year prison sentence after he defrauded the Postal Service of over $930,000. The scheme started in 2022, when the postmaster approached a local repair shop manager hinting about potential bribe payments in exchange for a large increase in vehicle repair work. The manager for the USPS vendor accepted and the postmaster started bringing in significant towing and repair business while the vendor falsely raised the expense amounts.