CHICAGO — A former U.S. Postal Service employee in Chicago has pleaded guilty in federal court to stealing government stimulus checks from the mail.
OLIVIA L. BRYANT admitted in a plea agreement that in 2020 and 2021 she stole hundreds of pieces of mail from her route in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. Some of the stolen mail contained government stimulus checks that were issued by the U.S. Treasury during the Covid-19 pandemic, the plea agreement states. Bryant admitted that five of the stimulus-check thefts occurred on St. Patrick’s Day 2021 when she removed the checks from her postal satchel and transferred them to her purse.
Bryant, 35, of Chicago, pleaded guilty Thursday to a charge of theft from the U.S. mail. The conviction is punishable by a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey set sentencing for Dec. 7, 2023.
The guilty plea was announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Scott Pierce, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Great Lakes Area Field Office of the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General; and J. Russell George, Inspector General of the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The government is represented by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Malgorzata Tracz Kozaka.