OAKLAND — A Bay Area woman whom prosecutors say “abused her position of trust as a United States Postal Service employee” to steal marijuana from packages and joined her brother in a $99,700 fraud scheme avoided additional jail time at a sentencing hearing this week.
Carolyn Powell was sentenced to three years of supervised release, but U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg turned down prosecutors’ requests to sentence her to six months in federal prison. She was arrested last November and has been free since a federal magistrate released her about a month later, court records show.
Powell was charged in two separate federal dockets — one charging her with theft by a postal service employee and the other charging her with bank fraud. She was accused of conspiring with her brother, Bennie Powell Jr., and a third person, Jonae Dickson. The scheme involved the use of “no fewer than” 46 stolen and forged United States Postal Service money orders, which they cashed in their own names and using counterfeit drivers licenses acquired from an uncharged co-conspirator, prosecutors said.