Postal carriers charged in $24M Houston check theft

• Key insight: Prosecutors say the ring recruited letter carriers to steal from their own routes, getting the mail before it ever reached the person it was addressed to.
• What's at stake: The checks were drawn on accounts at five FDIC-insured banks, and the loss from a check stolen out of the mail usually settles on a bank rather than on the customer who wrote it.
• Expert quote: "I think where we see some insider problems probably lie within the Postal Service more commonly," Scott Anchin of the Independent Community Bankers of America told American Banker last week, arguing banks' own internal controls are strong.

Overview bullets generated by AI with editorial review.

A federal grand jury indicted three Houston letter carriers and two other people last week, accusing them of pulling checks off their own delivery routes and reselling them to buyers on a messaging app.

The nine-count indictment, returned Wednesday in the Southern District of Texas, accuses Tryston Tremaine Vaughn, 28, and Alyssa Nadine Bryant, 27, of buying the stolen checks and reselling them.

It charges Catherine Clauzelle Kilpatrick, 29, Drakkor Jamar Alexander, 34, and Malcolm Tiree Joubert, 35, with supplying them. The three worked as mail carriers when Vaughn allegedly recruited them, according to a Tuesday press release from the U.S. attorney's office in Houston.

All five face one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and five counts of bank fraud. The three carriers each face an additional count of stealing mail as a postal employee.

The stolen checks drew on accounts at five banks: JPMorganChase, Citibank, BMO, Stellar Bank and Amegy Bank (a division of Zions Bancorporation).

The rise of postal-related check fraud

All banks are vulnerable to mail-theft-related check fraud. When someone steals a check from the mail and cashes or deposits it, the loss usually settles on a bank rather than on the customer whose check went missing, according to a September 2024 analysis from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.

Altered checks accounted for about 44% of the reports financial institutions filed during that review, checks used as templates for counterfeits 26% and fraudulently signed checks 20%, according to a manual sample FinCEN drew from the filings.

Financial institutions filed 15,417 reports of mail theft-related check fraud over six months in 2023, covering more than $688 million in suspicious activity, the analysis found.

The median report was $14,215.

Insider check fraud turns up more often at the Postal Service than inside banks, according to Scott Anchin, a senior vice president at the Independent Community Bankers of America.

Banks have done a good job building internal controls around check processing, Anchin told American Banker last week.

"I think where we see some insider problems probably lie within the Postal Service more commonly, where we see some unfortunate incidents, where postal employees are parties to mail theft," Anchin said.

How the theft was orchestrated

In the recent case, Vaughn and Bryant met the carriers in person to buy what they had taken, according to the indictment. Vaughn and others then posted the checks for sale on a channel named "slipsandchips" on the messaging app Telegram and shipped them to purchasers via FedEx, according to the indictment.

The indictment does not say what the buyers did with the checks once they arrived.

The charged conduct began around October 2022. The five checks the indictment charges individually date from October 2023 through September 2024.

The five and their co-conspirators unlawfully acquired and sold stolen checks totaling approximately $24 million, according to the indictment.

That figure is the face value of what the group allegedly handled, not what the banks lost. The five bank fraud counts cover five checks worth about $1.65 million altogether. Neither the indictment nor the release says how much the banks paid out or later recovered.

Four of those five checks ranged from just over $9,800 (drawn on a Chase account) to just under $80,000 (drawn on a Citibank account).

Joubert took the fifth, a check for $1.5 million (drawn on a BMO account), out of the mail in May 2024, according to the indictment.

Kilpatrick pleaded not guilty at her arraignment on Monday, according to the docket. The court appointed a public defender to represent her and released her on a $50,000 unsecured bond, which she owes only if she fails to appear.

The other four were in custody as of Tuesday morning. Vaughn was due to make his first court appearance Tuesday morning, and Joubert, Bryant and Alexander were due Tuesday afternoon, according to the docket.

Lawyers from the Federal Public Defender's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. American Banker could not reach the other four people charged; none of them has an attorney listed by the court.

Each of the five faces up to 30 years in prison on the conspiracy count. The carriers face up to five more years on the mail theft counts, according to the release.

Trial is set for Oct. 19.