{"id":38837,"date":"2026-01-06T11:34:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T16:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=38837"},"modified":"2026-01-06T11:35:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T16:35:17","slug":"charlotte-man-sentenced-to-prison-for-possession-of-stolen-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2026\/01\/06\/charlotte-man-sentenced-to-prison-for-possession-of-stolen-mail\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlotte Man Sentenced to Prison for Possession of Stolen Mail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2013 1\/5\/26 &#8211; Dominique Dunlap, 30, of Charlotte, was sentenced to 70 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release today for conspiracy to commit bank fraud and possession of stolen mail, announced Russ Ferguson, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. In addition to the prison sentence, Dunlap was ordered to pay $1,650,921.70 as restitution.<\/p>\n<p>Rodney Hopkins, Inspector in Charge of the Atlanta Division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) which oversees North Carolina, Kathleen Woodson, Special Agent in Charge, United States Postal Service, Office of the Inspector General (USPS-OIG) for the Mid-Atlantic Area Field Office (MAAFO), which overseas Charlotte,\u00a0and Chief Estella Patterson of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD), join U.S. Attorney Ferguson in making today\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n<p>Dunlap\u2019s wife and co-conspirator, Kiara Padgett, has\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-wdnc\/pr\/us-postal-carrier-and-husband-plead-guilty-mail-theft-scheme\">pleaded guilty<\/a>\u00a0to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and is awaiting sentencing. Dunlap\u2019s other co-conspirator, Terrell Alexander Hager, Jr., was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-wdnc\/pr\/charlotte-man-sentenced-prison-role-bank-fraud-conspiracy-involving-stolen-mail\">sentenced<\/a>\u00a0to three years in prison in connection to the scheme.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am sick and tired of checks being stolen from the mail,\u201d said U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson, \u201cparticularly where it is done internally by an employee.\u00a0 We will aggressively prosecute these cases to put an end to this crime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to court documents and today\u2019s sentencing hearing, from\u00a0August 2021 to November 2022, Dunlap conspired with Padgett, Hager, and others to execute a scheme involving stolen checks.\u00a0Padgett was employed by the U.S. Postal Service and used her position as a postal carrier to steal incoming and outgoing checks of businesses and individuals. Acting as an intermediary,\u00a0Dunlap sold the stolen checks to\u00a0Hager and other individuals. Court documents show that the total face value of checks stolen from Padgett\u2019s postal routes was over $8.8 million.<\/p>\n<p>On September 15, 2023, Dunlap pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and four counts of possession of stolen mail.<\/p>\n<p>In making today\u2019s announcement, U.S. Attorney Ferguson commended the USPIS, USPS-OIG, and CMPD for their investigation of the case.<\/p>\n<p>Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Frick of the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Charlotte prosecuted the case.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/j495.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-33705\" src=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/j495-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/j495-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/j495-30x30.jpg 30w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2013 1\/5\/26 &#8211; Dominique Dunlap, 30, of Charlotte, was sentenced to 70 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release today for conspiracy to commit bank fraud and possession of stolen mail, announced Russ Ferguson, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. In addition to the prison sentence, Dunlap [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,72,89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","category-theftandfraud","category-postal-crime","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38837","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=38837"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38839,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38837\/revisions\/38839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}