Ex-Postal Worker Gets Probation, Fine In Mail Theft

After Netflix received customer complaints that its DVDs weren't arriving, the 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 into 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.

This morning, 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.

His attorney, 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 before, was "ruined" because of what happened and lost his job.

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

He was the latest postal employee in the Bay area to be prosecuted by federal authorities for stealing mail. At least four others have been sentenced in the past year after pleading guilty:

• James Albert Harrigan, a 30-year employee of the Tampa post office assigned to the same Spruce Street center, was sentenced in May to a year and a day behind bars and ordered to pay $7,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to theft of mail, which carries a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Harrigan, 53, of Seffner, took 3,525 pieces of mail home in garbage bags at night between November 2006 and January 2007. He was captured on video surveillance using stolen gift cards to make purchases at Wal-Mart stores and a Target store. Investigators recovered 2,800 pieces of the stolen mail.

• Elminio Dion Thomas, 42, of Dover, worked 13 years at the Open Air Station, 76 Fourth St. N. in St. Petersburg. He pleaded guilty Sept. 10 to a charge of opening mail without authority and was sentenced to a year of probation and ordered to pay a $500 fine and $150 in restitution.

Thomas opened 10 pieces of mail containing gift cards worth a total of $300 to $500 from September 2007 to January. In one instance, he took a Wal-Mart gift card that had been mailed in Brooksville to St. Petersburg and used it to make purchases at a Wal-Mart in Tampa and a Sam's Club in Brandon.
Sam's Club surveillance video showed him using the card while wearing his postal uniform.

• Amanda Sue Omerzo, 20, of Lake Alfred, worked as a rural carrier associate assigned to Florence Villa Station in Winter Haven. She pleaded guilty to one count of opening mail without authority and was sentenced to a year of probation.

In December 2007, she opened a holiday greeting card mailed from Wisconsin to Winter Haven. After that, she hid 614 pieces of mail in a storage unit in Lake Alfred, including 81 pieces of first-class mail, seven pieces of nonprofit mail and 526 pieces of presorted, standard mail.

She told investigators she intended to deliver the mail but had been unwell and on another occasion had to take care of her baby.

• Alfonso Higareda, 30, of Apollo Beach, worked eight years as a city carrier assigned to the Sun City Center post office. He pleaded guilty to opening mail without authority and was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay $1,155 in restitution.

Higareda opened four pieces of mail, including envelopes containing a Publix Super Markets gift card and a Home Depot credit card. He was caught on video using the Home Depot card to make $1,155 in purchases and also was captured on store video using the $50 Publix gift card.

Higareda told investigators he used the cards to buy ladders, drills, saws, a workbench, a vacuum and beer, documents say. The total loss was estimated at $1,350.