Investigative Case Highlights

By focusing on investigating Postal Service employees who collude with drug trafficking organizations, most of our investigations target larger, multi-state operations. But as for keeping drugs out of America’s mail, no narcotics investigation is too small.

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?

At USPS OIG, we work hard to protect the Postal Service against fraud, waste, and abuse. We often underscore that the vast majority of postal employees are honest, hardworking people. When a postal employee breaks the law, they abuse their position of trust, but some crimes hurt the very employees who show up every day for the American public.

With a massive operation that delivers mail daily to over 160 million addresses in America, the Postal Service relies on many contractors to meet its ever-growing needs. But hundreds of contracts with countless transactions can be fertile ground for fraudsters. Take the Postal Service’s Facilities portfolio, which manages about 50,000 repairs and maintenance jobs yearly. Those contracts cost the Postal Service over $100 million each year. A large government contractor, a company with over 100...

When we started this series, we featured a case where a mail carrier filed for workers’ compensation after an on-the-job ankle injury — a fraudulent claim she milked for 14 years. But a more recent case has broken that mold: it involves a mail handler who sustained an injury at work and defrauded the Postal Service and the U.S. Department of Labor for 19 years.