![\"\"](\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/dept-of-justice2.gif\")
<\/p>\nNEW ORLEANS<\/b>\u00a0\u2013 2\/26\/19 – United States Attorney Peter G. Strasser announced today that\u00a0RYAN S. CORTEZ<\/b>, age 46, of Des Allemands, Louisiana, entered a plea of guilty Friday, February 22, 2019 to Misappropriation of Postal Funds, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1711.<\/p>\n
According to court records, special agents with the U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General (\u201cUSPS-OIG\u201d) were notified by PayPal and eBay regarding significant quantities of U.S. Postal stamps being sold by\u00a0CORTEZ<\/b>\u00a0on eBay. \u00a0A subsequent investigation by Postal OIG revealed that, as manager, Cortez had increased the North Kenner Post Office\u2019s reserve stamp stock by more than $600,000.\u00a0 Subpoenaed records from Cortez\u2019s Regions Bank account revealed substantial deposits, including more than $58,000 in a one-month period in the summer of 2018.<\/p>\n
During their investigation, Postal OIG agents determined\u00a0CORTEZ<\/b>\u00a0withdrew thousands of dollars on a regular basis at the Harrah\u2019s Casino in New Orleans.\u00a0 Harrah\u2019s records revealed\u00a0CORTEZ<\/b>\u00a0lost over $667,000 since 2011 and lost over $220,000 in 2017.\u00a0 Postal records indicate\u00a0CORTEZ<\/b>\u00a0earned an annual salary of $70,818.<\/p>\n
On October 10, 2018, Postal OIG special agents executed a federal search warrant issued by a federal magistrate judge at\u00a0CORTEZ\u2019s<\/b>\u00a0residence in Des Allemands.\u00a0Agents found evidence linking\u00a0CORTEZ\u00a0<\/b>to the ordering of the stamps from the Stamp Fulfillment Center thus increasing the reserve stamp stock for the North Kenner Post Office.\u00a0 During the search of the Post Office, Postal OIG special agents advised\u00a0CORTEZ\u00a0<\/b>of his\u00a0Miranda<\/i>\u00a0rights and advised him that they wanted to discuss financial issues with the Post Office.\u00a0\u00a0CORTEZ\u00a0<\/b>admitted to Postal agents that he had stolen stamps from the North Kenner Post Office and sold them on eBay. When asked to estimate the dollar amount of stamp stock that had been stolen,\u00a0CORTEZ\u00a0<\/b>responded, \u201cHundreds of thousands.\u201d\u00a0CORTEZ\u00a0<\/b>claimed he began selling stamps on eBay in 2015.\u00a0CORTEZ\u00a0<\/b>said he was addicted to gambling and the money obtained from the illegal sale of stamps was to support his gambling addiction.\u00a0\u00a0CORTEZ\u00a0<\/b>confirmed he manipulated stamp stock counts by using another supervisor\u2019s password to access the computer system. As a result, existing internal controls failed to detect the theft of these stamps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In total, Postal records reveal that\u00a0CORTEZ<\/b>\u00a0stole over $630,000 in U.S. stamps and sold them on eBay.\u00a0 According to Postal authorities,\u00a0CORTEZ\u2019s<\/b>\u00a0illegal activities constitute one of the largest internal Postal thefts by a Postal Service employee in the history of the U.S. Postal Service.<\/p>\n
CORTEZ<\/b>\u00a0faces a maximum penalty of ten (10) years imprisonment, followed by up to three (3) years of supervised release, a $250,000.00 fine and a $100.00 special assessment fee. Sentencing in this matter is scheduled for May 30, 2019 at 1:30 pm.<\/p>\n
U.S. Attorney Peter G. Strasser praised the work of the U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General.\u00a0 The prosecution of this case is being handled by Assistant<\/p>\n
U.S. Attorney Brian M. Klebba, Supervisor of the Financial Crimes Unit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW ORLEANS\u00a0\u2013 2\/26\/19 – United States Attorney Peter G. Strasser announced today that\u00a0RYAN S. CORTEZ, age 46, of Des Allemands, Louisiana, entered a plea of guilty Friday, February 22, 2019 to Misappropriation of Postal Funds, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1711. According to court records, special agents with the U.S. Postal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25782","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\/25782","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=25782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25783,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25782\/revisions\/25783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}