Two charged with stealing $120,000 in money orders
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
August 30, 2009
A former Woodbridge-area post office supervisor and his bowling buddy have been accused of stealing about $120,000 in money orders from the U.S. Postal Service, court documents said.
Jimmie L. Chatmon was a supervisor at various Woodbridge post offices from August 2004 through May 2008. His friend Philander Y. Jordan, whom Chatmon met in the mid-1990s through bowling, is currently serving time for an involuntary manslaughter conviction in the Prince William County jail.
In April 2008, Jordan, who is originally from North Carolina, was driving with a blood-alcohol content of nearly twice the legal limit when he slammed into another car on Interstate 95, killing the other driver.
One month later, Chatmon allegedly started cashing money orders from Jordan at the Woodbridge post office, charging documents said. Between May 2008 and July 2009, Chatmon cashed 224 of those money orders, totaling $119,800.
But a post office inspector general risk analysis report found that all of the money orders were never paid for, court documents said.
A postal service inspector general agent wrote in a sworn statement that Chatmon likely took the money orders while he was the manager of the Dale City post office.
The manager who worked there before Chatmon told the agent that stacks of money orders and a machine used to print them were in a locked filing cabinet, the statement said. Only post office managers had keys to the cabinet and the manager who followed Chatmon said he found the cabinet empty.
When investigators met with Jordan at the jail, he told them he purchased the money orders with winnings from bowling competitions over a 10-year period, the statement said. He said he asked Chatmon to replace the money orders with newer ones. Chatmon, he said, was holding the cash until Jordan gets out of jail.
The agent, however, looked closely at the serial numbers on the money orders Chatmon cashed.
"It is unlikely that money orders purchased over a ten year period would come exclusively from fourteen blocks of serial numbers," the agent wrote. "It would also be unlikely that there would be an absence of money orders issued to individuals other than Chatmon or Jordan from those same fourteen blocks."
Calls to Chatmon's attorney were not returned. No attorney information for Jordan was listed in court records.
