USPS Manager Allegedly Stole More Than $80,000 On The Job

December 28, 2024 8:19 pm

Authorities have charged yet another U.S. Postal Service (USPS) employee with theft, this time to the tune of more than $80,000.

The feds charged Emilio Chirico, 56, who served as station manager for the DeWitt, N.Y. Post Office, with wire fraud, misappropriation of postal funds, and false entries and reports.

This is according to a statement that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York published this month.

“The indictment alleges that between January 2021 and March 2023, Chirico stole $81,553.94 in stamps from the DeWitt Post Office and falsified postal records to conceal the theft of the stamps,” according to the Department of Justice (DOJ)

“Chirico has been the station manager at the DeWitt Post Office since March 2012.”

The charges filed against Chirico carry a maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison. They also carry a fine of up to $1 million and a term of supervised release of up to five years, according to DOJ officials.

This is far from the first incident of USPS officials allegedly stealing while on the job. Other examples include the following:

• A USPS worker in Georgia allegedly accepted bribes from a drug trafficker and hand-delivered cocaine and marijuana along his mail route, on taxpayer time. That employee later had to take disability leave and allegedly recruited his co-workers to take over for him.

• Last year, New Orleans resident Dazmon Dyer, a former USPS employee pleaded guilty in federal court to delaying and stealing the U.S. mail. Dyer stole money and gift cards from First-Class mail.

• Also last year, a Maryland woman used her position as a USPS clerk to obtain other people’s private information and then steal thousands of dollars.

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Congress designed the USPS to operate as a self-sustaining entity that, like a business, would cover its operating costs primarily with revenues from selling certain products and services. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2007, however, the USPS’s expenses began exceeding its revenue.

As the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2021, this has led to total net losses of $87 billion from FY 2007 through 2020, and $188 billion in total unfunded liabilities and debt.

The GAO recommends that Congress consider “fundamentally reexamining key aspects of postal service in the United States.”

Special thanks to Warhammer’s Wife proofreading this story before publication to make certain there were no misspellings, grammatical errors or other embarrassing mistakes and/or typos. Follow Warhammer on Twitter @Real_Warhammer