California Brothers Plead Guilty to Scamming U.S. Postal Service Out of $2.3 Million

Two brothers from Temecula, California, pleaded guilty to defrauding the U.S. Postal Service out of more than $2.3 million, authorities announced Friday.

In its news release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California identified the men as 35-year-old Anwer Fareed Alam and 31-year-old Yousofzay Fahim Alam.

The agency detailed the case:

According to their plea agreements, from October 2016 to May 2019, the Alam brothers purchased from the USPS Priority Mail packages and postages that included $100 in insurance for lost or damaged parcel contents. Anwer Alam wrapped empty packages or packages containing little or no value and then sent them via Priority Mail to fake recipients at fictitious addresses.

Yousofzay Alam then submitted to USPS fraudulent insurance claims via the Postal Service’s website and falsely certified that the packages contained items of higher value than they did and lied that the packages were lost or had been damaged in transit. Yousofzay Alam also included false invoices as well as photographs of goods that were not actually inside the parcels. The Alam brothers used aliases and fake business names to hide the number of false insurance claims they submitted.

USPS sent checks to the men in order to cover the purported losses, valued at up to $100 plus shipping costs. The insurance claim checks were sent via mail to the pair to numerous different addresses in the area where they lived.

Once the brothers got their hands on the checks, they put the money into their own bank accounts, the attorney’s office said.

“For example, in November 2018, the Alam brothers fraudulently caused to be sent in the mail via USPS a $106.59 Priority Mail claim check, which was mailed to a business address in Temecula,” authorities said, adding the USPS lost approximately $2,367,033 due to the scam.

The brothers now face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison regarding the case.

In November 2022, a U.S. Postal Service worker in Cincinnati admitted to embezzling mail packages that held drugs, including fentanyl, for thousands of dollars, per Breitbart News.

In October 2022, the outlet reported on a case in the New York City area, stating, “Three U.S. Postal Service workers and another individual were recently arrested for allegedly participating in a $1.3 million fraud and identity theft scheme.”

Another postal employee in Florida was charged in 2020 with stealing mail that included a mail-in ballot and political flyers, Breitbart News reported at the time.