Stolen Mail Cache At Westchester Motel Exposed COVID Scam: Feds

YONKERS, NY — A stash of benefits cards found in a Westchester motel room led investigators to uncover a multi-million-dollar COVID-19 relief theft conspiracy, according to a recently unsealed federal complaint.

Three postal workers have been charged in connection with their participation in a conspiracy to receive bribes and steal hundreds of pieces of mail linked to a COVID-19 benefits scheme that sought to obtain millions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment benefits from the NYS Department of Labor (DOL), according to federal prosecutors.

"As alleged, the defendants accepted bribes and stole hundreds of pieces of mail, abusing the public trust placed in them as employees of the U.S. Postal Service and enabling the perpetration of a multi-million-dollar scheme to obtain fraudulent COVID-19 unemployment benefits," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said. "My Office and our partners in law enforcement will continue to hold accountable the individuals who defraud government benefit programs as well as anyone else who enables them to do so."

Oscar Abreu was arrested Thursday morning in White Plains. Rafael Grullon and Aldo Palomino Jr. were arrested Friday in Queens.

Prosecutors said that from July 2020 to December 2020, the three men while employed as letter carriers with the U.S. Postal Service and working in Queens, accepted cash bribe payments to intercept and steal mail sent by the NYS DOL to specific addresses along their assigned postal routes. Abreu was first approached by a co-conspirator in mid-2020 and he agreed to accept $200 for every NYS DOL envelope he intercepted and turned over to the unidentified co-conspirator. The payment later increased to $500 per NYS DOL envelope, and Abreu eventually recruited two more letter carriers, Grullon and Palomino. The person who first recruted Abreu agreed to pay $200 per NYS DOL envelope that Grullon and Palomino intercepted, $100 of which Abreu would keep for himself.

The stolen NYS DOL mail was linked to a scheme started by the ringleader who recruited the postal workers and others to obtain COVID-19 unemployment benefits through the fraudulent filing and verification of benefit claims using the names and social security numbers of hundreds of unwitting New Yorkers, according to U.S. Postal Inspectors. The scheme required numerous addresses to which the syndicate could direct NYS DOL mailings related to the fraudulent claims, authorities said.

"It is a sad day when postal employees allegedly aid other conspirators to commit identify theft," USPIS Inspector General-in-Charge Daniel B. Brubaker said. "Their actions affected hundreds of innocent victims by enabling their fellow criminals to illegally receive Covid-19 unemployment benefits through the U.S Mail. These Letter Carriers have betrayed the public and showed a total disregard for honesty and the public trust that was placed with them."

Law enforcement agencies said they were first alerted to the scheme after two of the ringleaders fled a Yonkers hotel in December 2020, leaving behind in their previously occupied room over 700 pieces of NYS DOL mail, containing, among other items, benefit debit cards. The stash of stolen NYS DOL mail was tied to over 500 unemployment benefit claims seeking in excess of $16 million in benefits, approximately $3 million of which had already been paid by this time.

As a result of the mountain of evidence found in the Yonkers hotel room, Abreu, 41, of South Ozone Park, Grullon, 40, of Manhattan and and Aldo Palomino, 30, of Long Island City, are charged with conspiracy to commit theft and receipt of stolen mail, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; theft of mail by Postal officer or employee, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; and conspiracy to receive bribes, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.