{"id":18766,"date":"2017-03-21T16:22:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T21:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=18766"},"modified":"2017-03-21T16:23:56","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T21:23:56","slug":"tampa-man-gets-seven-years-in-scheme-to-sell-stolen-social-security-checks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2017\/03\/21\/tampa-man-gets-seven-years-in-scheme-to-sell-stolen-social-security-checks\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa man gets seven years in scheme to sell stolen social security checks he obtained from a former postal employee"},"content":{"rendered":"

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TAMPA – 3\/21\/17 – A man who admitted to his role in a scheme to sell almost $3 million in social security checks was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in federal prison.<\/p>\n

Richard Lee Anderson, 38, claimed he wasn’t aware of just how serious his crime was.<\/p>\n

“I’m sorry for everybody that I hurt,” Anderson said. “I was drinking … I didn’t realize I was I was in this much trouble, sir.”<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Anderson was involved in fencing the stolen checks, which he obtained from Stacy Darnell Mitchell, a former Postal Service employee who worked at a mail processing facility in St. Petersburg. Tampa Bay Times<\/a> – See statement regarding Stacy D. Mitchell below.<\/p>\n

Jury Finds Postal Employee Guilty Of Theft Of More Than $2 Million In Social Security Checks From Mail<\/h1>\n
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Tampa, Florida \u2013 1\/11\/17 – United States Attorney A. Lee Bentley, III announces that a federal jury today found Stacy Darnell Mitchell (48, Tampa) guilty of theft of government property and theft of mail. He faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in federal prison. His sentencing date has not yet been set. Mitchell was indicted on March 1, 2016.<\/p>\n

According to evidence presented at trial, Mitchell was a mail handler who had worked for more than 15 years at the Processing and Distribution Center (PDC) in St. Petersburg, which processes mail for all of Pinellas County. From January to October 2012, Mitchell stole Social Security benefit checks totaling over $2 million from that facility. More than 3,000 checks were taken from the PDC in 2012, all of which were destined for disabled or retired beneficiaries living in Pinellas County. Mitchell went on to sell the checks to an accomplice in Tampa, who in turn sold the checks to a network of individuals to be cashed at various convenience stores and check cashing businesses in Florida and elsewhere. Four of Mitchell\u2019s accomplices have been convicted of federal charges related to the same theft scheme.<\/p>\n

This case was investigated by the United States Postal Service \u2013 Office of Inspector General, the Social Security Administration – Office of Inspector the General, the United States Department of Treasury – Office of Inspector General, and the United States Postal Inspection Service, as well as various local enforcement agencies. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Patrick Scruggs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TAMPA – 3\/21\/17 – A man who admitted to his role in a scheme to sell almost $3 million in social security checks was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in federal prison. Richard Lee Anderson, 38, claimed he wasn’t aware of just how serious his crime was. “I’m sorry for everybody that I hurt,” Anderson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18766","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\/18766","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=18766"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18770,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18766\/revisions\/18770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}