Mail is Bent, Rifled for Gift Cards, Cash

By David Ashenfelter, Detroit Free Press

Jan. 12–U.S. Postal Service officials call it the “sanctity of the seal” — the people’s trust that when someone drops a letter in a mailbox, it will arrive unopened at its destination.

But that isn’t always the case.

Two metro Detroit postal workers — one a mail carrier in the Northville area and the other who worked at a mail processing center in Troy — were accused last week of violating that trust, charged in federal criminal complaints with stealing cash and gift cards from mail.

One of the admitted thieves would simply bend envelopes to determine whether gift cards were inside, investigators said.

Both workers said they had been stealing from the mail for months.

“The Postal Service touches almost everybody in this country almost every single day,” Fred Van de Putte, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Detroit, said Wednesday. “Everybody expects the Postal Service to work, and it’s news when it doesn’t.”

Ronda Denise Portis, 33, a temporary employee from Oak Park, and Charles Lee Hack, 40, a full-time letter carrier from Livonia, each were charged in criminal complaints in U.S. District Court in Detroit. Both have been fired.

About 6,700 people are arrested nationwide each year for mail theft, according to the inspection service, which estimates that less than 10 percent of the suspects are postal employees.

Two of Portis’ alleged victims were Sharon Petrella, who owns a fire extinguisher service in St. Clair County, and her mother, Katherine Mastej of Fraser.

Petrella said she mailed a $35 Meijer gift card to her mother in October for her 78th birthday. When her mother didn’t call to acknowledge receiving the gift, Petrella decided to call her.

“She was a little hurt because she thought I had forgotten her birthday,” Petrella said Wednesday.

She said they reported the loss to postal authorities and found later that someone had cashed the card at a Meijer store. They all assumed a neighbor had stolen the card from her mother’s mailbox.

“It wasn’t the money that bothered me,” Petrella said. “It was the idea that someone else got the enjoyment out of my mother’s present.”

She also said she decided to make up for the missing gift by giving her mom an even bigger Meijer gift card for Christmas — but this time, she delivered it in person.

Because of the theft, Petrella and her mother said they have a little less faith in a service they always took for granted.

“From the time employees hire in, and whether they’re temporary employees or anticipate being here 45 to 50 years, one of the first messages we give them is that the mail is one of the most trusted means of communication,” Postal Service spokeswoman Shannon LaBruyere said this week. “That’s why it’s so disappointing when someone violates that trust.”

Portis was caught Dec. 23, four months after inspectors began receiving an unusual number of complaints from customers about gift cards that failed to arrived in metro Detroit. The cards had been routed through the processing center in Troy.

On Oct. 13, inspectors mailed a test greeting card containing a $5 Target gift card and $5.

A week later, a Target investigator notified authorities that the card and five others were used at a Target store in Madison Heights on Oct. 15 to purchase $168 in merchandise.

A week after that, inspectors learned that two other stolen gift cards totaling $45 were cashed at a Meijer store in Madison Heights.

Investigators obtained store video of the Target and Meijer transactions and showed them to a supervisor at the processing center in Troy. The supervisor identified Portis as the woman in the videos.

Inspectors said they set up surveillance on Portis on Dec. 23 and watched her bend letters, looking for plastic gift cards.

They said she put one letter in her pocket. When confronted several hours later, Portis pulled out four letters and admitted taking 20 gift cards since Oct. 20, inspectors said.

The inspection service began investigating Hack after receiving several complaints, beginning in September, from Northville customers who said they didn’t receive greeting cards, or that cards arrived in opened envelopes.

On Dec. 8, inspectors placed a test letter containing $55 and a monitoring device among the mail for Hack’s route.

Barely one minute after Hack set out on his route, the monitor alerted inspectors that the test letter had been opened and its contents removed, court papers said.

Inspectors confronted Hack in his vehicle and he allegedly admitted having opened two greeting cards that morning, including the test letter, and stuffing the $55 in his pants pocket.

Hack said he had been stealing mail for two months because of financial stress, the court papers said.

Portis and Hack made brief appearances Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. A magistrate judge released them on personal bonds and set preliminary examinations for Jan. 26. Theft of U.S. mail carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Their court-appointed lawyer, Deputy Federal Andrew Densemo, said Wednesday that he hadn’t received enough information about the charges to comment.

Paul Krenn, spokesman for the inspection service in Washington, D.C., said the Postal Service has no way to track how many of the 212 billion pieces of mail processed every year fail to reach their destinations.

But based on customer satisfaction reports, Krenn said the number is very small.

He said the Postal Service has one of the highest customer satisfaction ratings among government agencies.

He said an independent survey conducted last year showed that 94 percent of residential customers rated their service as good to excellent.

IF YOUR MAIL IS AMISS:

To report missing mail in metro Detroit, call the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at 313-226-8184 anytime.

For other delivery problems, call your local post office.

Tales of mail woe: Readers are sharing stories with us about their experiences with the U.S. Postal Service. Go to http://freep.typepad.com/comments/2006/01/tales_of_mail_w.html to join the conversation.

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