U.S. Postal Service employee Dewayne Morris Sr. and his son and namesake were charged in federal court with multiple felony counts of bank fraud and conspiracy in connection with the theft of $5 million in Postal money order forms, the Department of Justice announced this week.
Morris Sr., 62, along with his son, Dewayne Morris Jr., 39, and four others were charged with conspiring to convert the stolen money order forms into cash, the DOJ said.
According to the indictment, Morris Sr., then a supervisor for post offices in Venice, Playa del Rey, and Marina del Rey, ordered and received 10,000 blank Postal money order forms. A subsequent audit revealed that approximately 5,100 of those 10,000 money order forms were missing. With a maximum value of $1,000 per money order, the potential value of the missing money order forms is $5.1 million, the DOJ said.
Contrary to Morris Sr.’s claim to investigators that he properly returned some of the 10,000 money order forms, the indictment alleges that his son, Morris Jr., distributed the missing money orders to co-conspirators. Both the father and his son are residents of Inglewood.