A former Postal Service employee and her accomplice will spend several years in federal prison for a multimillion-dollar check fraud scheme.
Kalaijha Tomeco Ranier Lewis, the former employee, and her accomplice, Brian Christopher Williams III, defrauded several banks and credit unions between 2021 and 2023, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Alabama.
The USPS Office of Inspector General recently highlighted the case as a “cautionary tale” on its website.
Lewis, who worked at a Post Office in Mobile, AL, was recruited by Williams to steal and sell him hundreds of high-value checks destined for business PO Boxes.
Williams would then alter the stolen checks, which equaled more than $17 million, and sell them to other scammers through an illicit marketplace on the Telegram app.
In June 2023, federal investigators began surveillance at the Post Office where Lewis worked.
On several occasions, agents saw her manipulating the windowed envelopes of checks to see the amounts listed inside while she sorted mail. She was arrested after she was caught stuffing a stack of stolen checks down her pants.
Lewis confessed that she stole business checks over the course of several months for Williams, who paid her $2,000 to $3,000 for each stack of stolen checks that she brought him.
Later that day, agents arrested Williams at a gas station in Mobile, where he had arrived to purchase the stolen checks from Lewis. He was found with $10,000 in cash as well as drugs, a handgun and stolen checks valued at more than $417,000.
The investigation also found Williams had solicited another Postal Service employee in California and had an outstanding arrest warrant for another crime.
Williams was sentenced to eight years in federal prison while Lewis was sentenced to five years.
Following their release from prison, Williams and Lewis each will serve five-year terms of supervised release and will be subject to credit restrictions.
Williams and Lewis were both ordered to pay more than $234,000 in victim restitution and a total of $300 in special assessments for their crimes.
