{"id":23754,"date":"2018-06-26T08:41:31","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T13:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=23754"},"modified":"2018-06-26T08:41:31","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T13:41:31","slug":"chicago-bulk-mailing-company-defrauds-postal-service-out-of-16-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2018\/06\/26\/chicago-bulk-mailing-company-defrauds-postal-service-out-of-16-million\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Bulk-Mailing Company Defrauds Postal Service Out of $16 Million"},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal Charges Accuse Owners of Suburban Bulk-Mailing Company of Defrauding the Postal Service out of $16 Million<\/h1>\n
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CHICAGO \u2014 The owners of a suburban bulk-mailing company swindled the U.S. Postal Service out of at least $16 million by forging documents and secretly using an official date stamp to fraudulently authenticate payment of postage for than 80 million pieces of mail, according to criminal charges filed today by the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Chicago.<\/p>\n

YOGESH PATEL and ARVIND LAKKAMSANI owned and operated Prodigy Mailing Services Inc., which was based in Bolingbrook and later in Woodridge.\u00a0 Prodigy assembled bulk mailings from customers and provided the mailings \u2013 along with fraudulent payment and verification forms \u2013 to the Postal Service for delivery, without paying postage on those mailings.\u00a0 According to the charges, Patel and Lakkamsani schemed with a third defendant, DAVID GARGANO, to fraudulently cause the Postal Service to deliver numerous bulk mailings without payment.\u00a0 The trio forged a Postal Service clerk\u2019s signature on the verification forms and secretly used an official Postal Service date stamp to make it falsely appear that the clerk had authenticated postage, the charges allege.<\/p>\n

From 2010 to 2015, the defendants caused a loss to the Postal Service of at least $16 million, according to the charges.<\/p>\n

A criminal information charges each of the three defendants \u2013 Patel, 58, of Orlando, Fla., Lakkamsani, 57, of Northbrook, Ill., and Gargano, 51, of Barrington, Ill. \u2013 with one count of mail fraud.\u00a0 Arraignments in U.S. District Court in Chicago have not yet been scheduled.<\/p>\n

The charges were announced by John R. Lausch, Jr., United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; and William Hedrick, Acting Inspector-in-Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Chicago.<\/p>\n

According to the charges, Gargano owned Illinois-based Direct Mail Resources Inc., which collected a fee to match customers seeking to make bulk mailings with companies who could perform those services, such as Prodigy.\u00a0 Gargano referred two energy companies to Prodigy for bulk mailing services.\u00a0 The two energy companies provided millions of dollars to the defendants to pay the postage for the companies\u2019 bulk mailings. \u00a0Instead of using those funds to pay the postage, the defendants split the money amongst themselves and used it for their own benefit, the charges allege.<\/p>\n

The information alleges that the defendants made the mailings but kept the postage money from the energy companies without paying postage to the Postal Service.\u00a0 Patel and Lakkamsani fraudulently maintained a key to a Postal Service mail unit, which was located inside Prodigy\u2019s facility, and used the key to secretly access an official date-stamp without the Postal Service\u2019s knowledge or approval, the information states.\u00a0 By forging the Postal clerk\u2019s signature and fraudulently stamping the mailings, the defendants made it falsely appear that the verification forms \u2013 which identified the amount of postage paid for the bulk mailings \u2013 were authentic and that postage had been appropriately paid, the charges allege.<\/p>\n

The public is reminded that an information is not evidence of guilt.\u00a0 The defendants are presumed innocent and entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.\u00a0 Mail fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.\u00a0 If convicted, the Court must impose a reasonable sentence under federal statutes and the advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.<\/p>\n

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Stern.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal Charges Accuse Owners of Suburban Bulk-Mailing Company of Defrauding the Postal Service out of $16 Million CHICAGO \u2014 The owners of a suburban bulk-mailing company swindled the U.S. Postal Service out of at least $16 million by forging documents and secretly using an official date stamp to fraudulently authenticate payment of postage for than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23754","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\/23754","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=23754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23755,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23754\/revisions\/23755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}