DALLAS — One of many greatest threats to the United State Postal Service just isn’t the ever-growing value of stamps, lengthy strains on the put up workplace and even delayed mail.
The most important threats to USPS could be the mail handlers themselves.
Auditors discovered {that a} tiny share of them steal. They usually steal quite a bit, in keeping with a shocking federal investigation of a dozen mail sorting services throughout the U.S.
In mid-December, federal prosecutors charged two postal staff with stealing greater than $1 million in enterprise checks. The 2 labored at postal services in Virginia and North Carolina.
However that’s not the entire mail bag on the matter. In a shocking discovering by the USPS Workplace of Inspector Normal, I.G. Tammy L. Hull writes that “criminal organizations are targeting, recruiting and colluding with postal employees to move narcotics through the postal network and to steal checks – both personal and government-issued checks — credit cards and other valuables from the mail.”
‘Shocking to everyone’
He added, “Criminal organizations are recruiting postal workers to infiltrate the postal service. That should be shocking to everyone.”
No Texas services have been focused within the year-long audit of the dozen crops.
Nevertheless, a Houston plant is present process an analogous probe with the outcomes to be introduced within the spring, says Tara Linne, spokesperson for the USPS Inspector Normal.
USPS spokesperson David Walton instructed The Watchdog, “We have no additional comment” except for administration response to the investigation.
The auditors instructed a collection of enhancements together with extra coaching of staff, stronger nationwide coverage banning private gadgets from contained in the services and updating some 18,619 cameras in crops all through the nation. Lots of them not work.
How do they steal?
It’s not that onerous while you convey luggage, backpacks, coats and jackets onto the plant ground. Mail might be transferred from a field to a jacket. With poor coaching the danger of getting caught is small.
A Milwaukee mail clerk beneath surveillance regarded in trays for greeting playing cards that contained present playing cards. The clerk moved them to a different tray throughout their shift, after which positioned all of the mail in a backpack.
The clerk was fired, prosecuted and located responsible, the report stated. The clerk was given two years probation and ordered to pay $1,600.
In St. Louis, a mail handler stole 55 out of 150 packages out of a truck. The mail handlers helped one another as lookouts whereas stolen gadgets have been stashed of their jackets and backpacks.
Seven staff both resigned or have been fired. One was sentenced to a few months in a federal jail.
Options aren’t as simple as they sound. Most services don’t present lockers for staff. Plus, staff go out and in to get mail out of vans. They want their jackets on chilly days.
Repute at stake
This can be a troublesome downside to unravel. “Employee mail theft damages the Postal Service’s reputation and diminishes public trust in the nation’s mail system,” the report warns.
This jogs my memory of the basic horror film line:
“The call is coming from inside the house.”
Within the know
In case you suspect your mail was stolen contact the postal inspector at 877-876-2455. The web site is www.uspsoig.gov/.
File a criticism at your native put up workplace.
It’s all the time safer to mail your gadgets contained in the put up workplace, as a substitute of the blue assortment bins.
In case you haven’t already, contemplate paying your payments by means of on-line banking fairly than mailed checks.