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.
Our special agents recently wrapped up a case in Kansas City, MO, that had all the trappings of a conspiracy to defraud the postal system of thousands of dollars. USPS has a program to cover the cost of fuel for its more than 231,000 delivery vehicles. Mail carriers typically put gas charges on USPS credit cards issued specifically for that purpose.
In Kansas City, one or more postal employees seemed to have turned the work-related chore into a sort of criminal enterprise. In the wake of the abuse was a messy trail of electronic transactions and paper receipts indicating fraud: Charges made for the wrong fuel type and sometimes well past normal work hours. Charges made far away from delivery routes and sometimes for amounts exceeding the gallon limit for postal vehicles. There were even bouts of back-to-back charges indicating multiple vehicles were being filled in the span of a few minutes.
The transactions pointed to three postal employees assigned to the same delivery unit. But as our special agents took a closer look, they narrowed the suspects down to one.
When our special agents interviewed the sole employee, she denied all the allegations. She claimed not to know anything about the suspicious transactions, insisting she knew the rules applying to the fueling program. She also said she never used her colleagues’ pin numbers to make fuel purchases. But the evidence was stacked against her, and once confronted with that reality, she folded.
Evidence captured her using the card to fuel other people’s vehicles, sometimes for tanks with twice the capacity of USPS vehicles. With the scheme she managed to rack up $24,000 in charges in just seven months.
What was most egregious is the employee had thrown her two colleagues under suspicion after she used their credentials to make the fraudulent purchases. She did it without their knowledge or consent, and it created personal hardships for the two innocent bystanders — one of them had been working hard to earn a managerial position. But thanks to our agents’ work, their names were quickly cleared from any wrongdoing.
The employee was removed from USPS and was indicted for misappropriating postal funds. In February 2024, she entered a guilty plea and was later sentenced to five years’ probation and ordered to pay restitution of over $24,000.
If you suspect or know of financial fraud involving Postal Service employees or contractors, please report it to our Hotline.
