Investigative Case Highlights

By the time her boyfriend planted the idea, she’d worked at the Postal Service long enough to know exactly what envelopes to look for. She showed up to work each day playing the part so well, no one suspected a thing. But in just a few months, she managed to steal more than $24 million in checks, making this the largest mail theft conspiracy in the history of the Western District of North Carolina.

If you’re into luxury goods, you probably take the trouble to make sure the items you buy aren’t stolen or counterfeit — most retail websites have disclaimers to that effect to give prospective buyers more confidence. Barring theft or dubious origins, how would you feel if the items you bought were acquired with stolen funds?

A notification goes off on your phone flagging a $680 purchase you didn’t make. Stranger still is the credit card used was supposed to arrive in the mail a few days ago but never did. What do you do? One postal customer in Delaware filed a complaint with our Hotline when it happened to him. Our special agents quickly opened an investigation and, having connected with the Smyrna Police Department, found there were similar complaints from other postal customers in the area. And it wasn’t just...

Tap. Swipe. Beep. If you were standing right there, eyeing the registers, none of the ebbs and flows of customers buying luxury goods would seem unusual: high-end jewelry, designer handbags and shoes, the latest couture. But on the other side of security cameras, trained eyes were watching.

In the small world of mail theft involving postal employees, joint criminal operations typically see the longest and harshest sentences. However, a recent case our special agents cracked broke the mold for a one-person job. In September 2022, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service provided a lead to our Office of Investigations about suspected check thefts at a post office in Arkansas. The case had started in June after a USPS arrow key that opened...