Queens mail carriers busted in alleged $16M fraud scheme

[Kamaji]

Queens mail carriers busted in alleged $16M fraud scheme

By Ben Feuerherd
August 15, 2022

Stacks of mail accidentally left in a hotel room led to the arrest of three crooked Queens postal carriers — and unraveled a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme, officials say.

The group’s alleged ringleader forgot the damning evidence when she was forced to change rooms at the Yonkers hotel and then scurried to retrieve it but was too late, authorities said, according to the Journal News on Monday.

The scheme involved a COVID-19 benefits scam, law-enforcement officials said.

The alleged corrupt mail carriers – Oscar Abreu, Rafael Grullon and Aldo Palomino Jr. – became wrapped up in the illicit caper in 2020, when the ringleader approached Abreu and asked him to steal mail from the New York Department of Labor along his postal route, according to federal prosecutors.

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The alleged ringleader, Yohauris Rodriguez Hernandez, had been helping to file bogus unemployment-benefit claims in the names of hundreds of people, officials said. When payouts from the Department of Labor were then mailed off to the unsuspecting people, the mail carriers intercepted them along their routes, according to federal authorities.

The ring filed more than 500 unemployment-benefit claims worth more than $16 million-plus — with payouts totaling over $3 million, authorities said.

The enterprise unraveled when Hernandez and another suspect left hundreds of pieces of mail from the Department of Labor behind in a Yonkers hotel room, according to the feds.

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2022/08/15/nyc-mail-carriers-busted-for-16m-fraud-scheme/