USPS Office of Inspector General

Buyer Beware

Investigative Case Highlights | January 22, 2025

If you’re into luxury goods, you probably take the trouble to make sure the items you buy aren’t stolen or counterfeit — most retail websites have disclaimers to that effect to give prospective buyers more confidence. Barring theft or dubious origins, how would you feel if the items you bought were acquired with stolen funds?

Last July, we featured a story about a New York City bling ring involved in the sale of luxury items purchased with credit and debit cards stolen by postal employees. While that case was being investigated in Manhattan, a parallel probe was taking place into a criminal group operating in Brooklyn.

Our special agents started this case after receiving an anonymous tip alleging credit cards were being pocketed from the mailstream at a local postal facility.

Working with the Postal Inspection Service and NYPD officers, our investigators tracked one suspect down who’d been recruited by people outside the Postal Service.

The employee was promised easy cash in exchange for financial instruments the group would then fraudulently activate and use.

It turned out the six outside criminals had recruited two other postal employees to aid the operation. The six used the stolen cards to buy luxury goods from high-end retailers and major departments stores — we’re talking premium brands: Dior, Chanel, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, and Hermes, among others.

Once acquired, they sold the items on an online consignment store they ran that allegedly specialized in “pre-owned luxury items” guaranteed to not be fake or counterfeit.

The criminal organization was strategic: while the six suspects roped in all three postal employees, they made sure the mail carriers didn’t know about each other.

Dividing and conquering is a common strategy to isolate co-conspirators and prevent them from comparing notes about their criminal behavior and its consequences. Promises of easy cash were no doubt paired with assurances the employees would never be caught.

But caught they were.

Our agents and their law enforcement partners executed search warrants on the store’s warehouse and one of the suspects’ homes, finding hundreds of ill-gotten goods totaling over half a million dollars.

The losses associated with this investigation totaled to about $1.3 million.

Before or after they were arrested, the three employees resigned from the Postal Service.

They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal mail while employed at USPS, while the other six suspects pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy to commit access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.

The government seized the store’s website for its involvement in the fraud and the court sentenced all nine accused to a combined 27 years in federal prison and ordered them to pay over $536,000 in restitution.

The warning for consumers is this: do your research. While the consignment’s store website is now defunct, another popped up in its place. It might look legitimate, even citing this in the About Us page:

NOTE: [The retailer] “does not accept fake or counterfeit merchandise of any kind.”

One can never be too careful.

If you suspect or know of mail theft or financial crimes involving Postal Service employees or contractors, please report it to our Hotline.

For further reading:

Department of Justice (via uspsoig.gov), Multiple U.S. Postal Service Employees And Others Arrested For $1.3 Million Fraud And Identity Theft Scheme