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Man Gets Probation For Stealing Mail

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI

esilvestrini@tampatrib.com

Published: February 4, 2009

TAMPA - After Netflix received customer complaints that its DVDs weren't arriving, the U.S. Postal Service started an investigation.

With a hidden video camera watching, mail processing clerk Angel Manuel Gonzalez stole two pieces of mail two days in a row in June at the Tampa Processing and Distribution Center, 5201 W. Spruce St. The 11-year postal employee slipped the mail in his lunchbox, hidden between two plastic mail trays.

Caught red-handed, Gonzalez, 60, admitted he had been stealing mail for the past year. He allowed investigators to search his home, and they recovered 28 stolen Netflix DVDs.

That's all investigators could prove, although Netflix blames Gonzalez for the disappearance of more than 500 DVDs.

On Tuesday, Gonzalez was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay a $500 fine on a charge of opening mail without authority, which carries a maximum of a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. Gonzalez also paid $316.40 in restitution.
Public defender Alec Fitzgerald Hall told U.S. Magistrate Thomas B. McCoun III that his client, who had never been in trouble with the law, was ruined because of what happened and lost his job.

"I'm regretting what I did," Gonzalez told McCoun. "I'm sorry about it."

Reporter Elaine Silvestrini can be reached at (813) 259-7837 or esilvestrini@tampatrib.com.

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