A U.S. Postal Service worker and two others have been charged in a scheme in which $24 million worth of checks were stolen from the mail and offered for sale online, federal prosecutors said.
The checks were sold through a Telegram channel, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina said in a statement.
The Postal Service worker, Nakedra Shannon, 29, worked at a processing center in Charlotte for around two years and stole the checks from April to July of this year, prosecutors said.
Two other people called co-conspirators by the U.S. attorney’s office, Donnell Gardner, 27, and Desiray Carter, 24, have also been charged.
Carter ran the Telegram channel “OG Glass House” on which the checks were advertised for sale, according to an indictment. His name on the messaging app was “SW1PER.”
Gardner would then send the checks, according to the indictment, and the money would be split, half going to Carter and Shannon and Gardner getting the other half, the document says.
Undercover officers posed as buyers and Carter directed them to a CashApp account and a Bitcoin wallet, the indictment says.
Of the around $24 million in stolen checks, $8 million were U.S. Treasury checks, according to the indictment.
All three were arrested this week and have been released on conditions, court records show.
An attorney for Shannon declined to comment, and an attorney for Carter did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday evening. An attorney did not appear to be listed for Gardner.
The trio made “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” in the illegal enterprise, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
All three are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit financial institution fraud and five counts of theft of government property, the office said.
Carter and Gardner are also charged with seven counts of possession of stolen mail matter, it said, and Shannon is charged with eight counts of theft of mail by a postal employee.