A Fort Lee, NJ, letter carrier was the victim of a romance scam that involved him in multiple money-laundering schemes.
In June 2020, the U.S. Secret Service contacted the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General, or OIG, about a mail carrier who was suspected of using third-party names to receive counterfeit checks and fraudulent unemployment insurance payments.
Also, more than 60 small businesses in 23 states had designated the employee’s personal bank account to receive money from 70 Economic Injury Disaster Loan applications. The letter carrier’s account received almost $452,000 in Small Business Administration deposits from third parties in two months.
The employee moved $238,000 to a bank account belonging to a business owner in Philadelphia. That same account had received an additional $600,000 from the letter carrier and other parties whose bank accounts also received Small Business Administration funds.
When OIG special agents interviewed the letter carrier, they discovered he’d been catfished — deceived by someone online using a fake persona for fraudulent purposes. He had fallen in love with a “model” on a popular social media platform and believed the two were to be married soon.
The “model” had asked him to speak with her lawyer about a problem involving her family trust fund. Eager to help, the carrier obliged when the supposed lawyer gave him instructions on receiving payments and transferring them to his account.
Investigators executed a search warrant on the scammer’s residence and found fraudulent unemployment claims and evidence of additional romance scams. They linked the scammer to a criminal conspiracy that bilked the federal government out of $5.6 million and state unemployment agencies out of $900,000.
Investigators arrested the scammer after he was indicted by a grand jury. He pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and he recently was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison and ordered to pay back $2.6 million in restitution.
As a victim, the letter carrier wasn’t subject to charges or arrest.
The OIG recently highlighted the case on its website.
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