On Tuesday, June 11, authorities announced that a former employee of the US Postal Service has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing $90,000. The conviction stands, and the individual will serve the full sentence.
According to the US Attorney for Massachusetts, Jamesa Rankins, a 27-year-old from Brockton, has been convicted of a single charge of government money theft and three counts of wire fraud. She has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and has been ordered to repay the $104,698 that she had embezzled from the Postal Service.
Before being terminated in 2021, Rankins spent about four and a half years as a Sales & Service Distribution Associate at the Montello Post Office in Brockton. Her responsibilities included reprinting money orders for customers in situations where they were lost, damaged, or incorrectly issued.
According to the prosecutor, a total of 126 counterfeit replacement money orders were produced by her, with a value of $90,000, starting from the year 2020.
Back in May of 2020, it was reported that the Massachusetts Division of Unemployment Assistance caught wind of a woman who had applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance despite still being employed at the Post Office. It was later discovered that she had fraudulently collected $15,000 before being caught by officials.