US Postal Workers Steal $1.3 Million

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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US Postal Workers Steal $1.3 Million

© Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Between poor service and losses, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has had enough bad press. Four postal workers allegedly stole $1.3 million. Another five people appear to be facing charges. The U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of Manhattan said those charged stole credit cards from the mail and used them to charge items at retail stores, “including high-end retailers.” Some of the goods were resold on LuxurySnob.
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Founded in 2013, LuxurySnob has a group of workers who oversee a process to ensure items are authentic. The USPS workers probably got a good price.
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It is hard for the USPS to monitor its worker’s behavior. The USPS has over 516,000 career employees and over 136,000 non-career workers. The Southern District brought a case against a USPS worker in August.  These charges had to do with COVID-19 benefit fraud.

The USPS does have a way to report potential crimes, which include mail fraud, identity theft, mail theft, child exploitation cybercrime, suspicious mail, email scams and trouble with USPS workers. Presumably, the list is based on crimes that U.S. Postal Inspection Service already has seen.
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The new charges further support why people are better off using email and services like Dropbox to exchange information. Are there cybercriminals? Yes, but they need to be more skilled than people who steal credit cards.
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Another topic that needs to be addressed is why credit card companies send their cards via the mail at all. People who order cards should be told to come to the post office to pick them up. The USPS has a huge 31,247 locations, most of which should not exist.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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