{"id":16549,"date":"2016-10-07T16:02:11","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T21:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=16549"},"modified":"2016-10-07T16:02:11","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T21:02:11","slug":"former-ny-postal-employee-charged-in-mail-and-identity-theft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2016\/10\/07\/former-ny-postal-employee-charged-in-mail-and-identity-theft\/","title":{"rendered":"Former NY Postal Employee Charged In Mail and Identity Theft"},"content":{"rendered":"

10\/07\/16 – According to PressConnects<\/a> Melissa Elliott, 27, of Binghamton, is facing 14 federal criminal charges after an\u00a0investigation conducted by a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General. The investigation, which\u00a0began in early January,\u00a0was detailed in\u00a0a 30-page criminal complaint filed Sept. 27\u00a0in U.S. District Court.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say a\u00a0Elliott claimed she stole mail to pay for a speeding ticket. Elliott also racked up thousands in fraudulent\u00a0purchases with credit cards opened under\u00a0another person’s identity.\"theft\"<\/p>\n

Elliott is also accused of opening\u00a0several bank credit card accounts using another woman’s social security number and other identifying details, without the victim’s authorization, in order to get credit cards in the victim’s name, according to prosecutors. She fraudulently charged $57,251.49 on those accounts, court papers allege.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 4, officials say, a Cortland postal employee discovered several pieces of opened padded envelopes above the lockers in the post office break room. Among them:\u00a0a registered mail parcel that was supposed to contain jewelry and an express mail item that was supposed to contain $350 in cash, according to court papers.<\/p>\n

Investigators conducting covert surveillance saw Elliott sifting through the collection mail hamper for outgoing mail on Jan. 6, separating several greeting cards, court papers said. She put\u00a0them back when another clerk told her it was not necessary to empty the hamper at that time.<\/p>\n

Elliott later\u00a0removed some 23 pieces of mail, namely greeting cards, and took them to her vehicle in the parking lot, according to investigators, who stopped her for questioning.<\/p>\n

She told investigators she was “only looking for cash,” and\u00a0would throw out gift cards that were in pilfered mail while driving from Cortland to Binghamton along Interstate 81.<\/p>\n

According to court papers, Elliott began working at the Cortland Post Office in November 2015 and started opening mail and stealing the contents in order to pay her $273 fine from a speeding ticket she received a month earlier.<\/p>\n

She told investigators she was ticketed for going 96 miles per hour in a 65 mile-per-hour zone while driving to her job interview for the postal service position. Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10\/07\/16 – According to PressConnects Melissa Elliott, 27, of Binghamton, is facing 14 federal criminal charges after an\u00a0investigation conducted by a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General. The investigation, which\u00a0began in early January,\u00a0was detailed in\u00a0a 30-page criminal complaint filed Sept. 27\u00a0in U.S. District Court. Prosecutors say a\u00a0Elliott claimed she stole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","category-theftandfraud","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16550,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16549\/revisions\/16550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}