Two former United States Postal Service (USPS) letter carriers were sentenced to more than five years in prison after stealing more than $10 million worth of checks in the mail.
Rashad Deon Stolden, 34, of Huntington Beach, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in April and was sentenced last week to 66 months in prison, Central District of California prosecutors say.
[adinserter block="1"]Stolden was also ordered to pay $1,627,291 in restitution.
Charlie Banks Green Jr., 37, of East Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to the same charges in April and received the same jail sentence and fine this week, CBS News reports.
Prosecutors say Stolden and Green stole checks from the US Treasury Department and debit cards from the California Employment Development Department (EDD), which manages the state’s unemployment insurance program.
Their crime spree, which lasted from 2020 through August 2024, included the theft of a $7.3 million Treasury check. Stolden and Green hawked the stolen checks to co-conspirators who utilized counterfeit identity documents to negotiate them.
In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors argued that Stolden took funds from people in need and used them to bankroll lavish purchases.
“Nowhere in [Stolden’s] voluminous communications throughout this conspiracy did he express any empathy for his victims even as he stole their EDD cards containing their disability and unemployment benefits. [Stolden] seemed to think only of his own profits, trying to decide whether he should use his thefts to pay for a $13,000 hotel stay in Bora Bora, or if he should upgrade to a $20,000 stay in the Presidential Villa at the Conrad.”
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