A United States Postal Service employee is scheduled to be sentenced next month after pleading guilty to stashing thousands of parcels he could not “make time” to deliver.
Jason Delacruz, a postal worker in Chesapeake, Virginia, rented out a storage container and placed thousands of packages and letters in it over several months, according to CNN. Delacruz started driving his route in late 2018 and rented the storage unit in February. Police began investigating Delacruz after receiving a complaint in May that a mailman was storing packages in a unit.
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“The employee no longer works for the Postal Service,” USPS public relations manager Dave Partenheimer said. “He resigned in 2019 and he worked for 14 months prior to his resignation.”
Delacruz rented the storage unit “for the sole purpose of storing mail he could not deliver,” according to court documents.
The mailman told authorities that he felt “pressured” to deliver all the mail and could not “make time” to complete the entire route. He said he intended to deliver all of the excess mail eventually but could not ever make time.
United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General investigators found nearly 5,000 pieces of mail stored in Delacruz’s unit, including 97 pieces of first-class mail. Most of the stashed mail was made up of roughly 4,700 advertisements.
Delacruz pleaded guilty to felony delay of mail delivery in November and faces a fine and up to five years in prison.
