https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ds-embezzled-funds-and-42288-hoarded-letters/
ederal authorities have found more than two dozen cases of mail theft and related crimes in Southern California as part of a sweep targeting corruption and criminal activity affecting the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. attorney’s office of the Central District of California announced last Friday.
In all, federal prosecutors charged 33 defendants in 28 cases with offenses including mail fraud, conspiracy, embezzlement and making false statements. The defendants ranged in age from 23 to 73, and most cases involved Postal Service employees, the attorney’s office said.
Many of the cases, made public last week, showed a range of fraudulent activity that pervaded many levels of the agency.
In one case, the defendant, Jarol Garcia, was a former mail handler who previously served as local area president of the Mail Handlers Union. The attorney’s office said Garcia stole mobile phones from packages going through the Moreno Valley Delivery Distribution Center, where he worked. Garcia would then trade the phones on a website; at one point, he allegedly possessed at least 166 mobile phones he had stolen from the mail, according to an indictment.
One defendant, Nicole Elwood, allegedly stole mail and packages that contained medications, including some sent from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to veterans, the attorney’s office said. She was charged with theft of mail by a postal employee. It was unclear what happened to the medications.
Several defendants were charged with mail theft or with dumping mail altogether. In the most extreme instance of this from the sweep, postal carrier Sherry Naomi Watanabe was charged with delaying the mail after investigators found “approximately 48,288 pieces” of mail stashed in her Los Angeles-area home, according to a plea agreement. The mail was supposed to have been delivered to customers on Watanabe’s route in Placentia, Calif., court documents said.