A Florida letter carrier has been arrested for allegedly stealing about 4,000 pieces of mail, mostly greeting cards from a local retirement community.
Authorities said Miranda Delee Farleigh, 25, allegedly continued this theft for months in a search for money. The crimes were noticed when Farleigh’s own parents reported them.
Farleigh worked as a contract mail carrier for the USPS for six years and worked with a route that included The Villages retirement community in Orlando, Florida, according to a complaint written by U.S. Postal Inspector David Keith.
Farleigh’s mother is also a contract letter carrier and admitted to the local postmaster in late November that she discovered “several tubs and bags of” mail that had been opened in her daughter’s bedroom, Keith wrote.
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Eventually, her mother “relieved Miranda Farleigh of her postal duties and secured the recovered mail,” according to the complaint.
“Miranda Farleigh admitted to me that she had been rifling mail containing greeting cards in order to steal currency and/or gift cards,” according to Keith. “Farleigh confessed that while she had been working in the official capacity as a mail carrier, she had targeted the outgoing mail that was dropped off by residents in The Villages.”
The exact amount of money or items stolen is “part of an ongoing investigation,” Tampa-based U.S. Attorney spokesman William Daniels said in a statement to USA TODAY.
In the criminal complaint, Keith cited interviews with seven residents of The Villages whose mail was allegedly stolen by Farleigh.
In the complaint, Keith spoke to one of the victims, identified as R.D., who said he had 13 pieces of mail taken from Farleigh.
“R.D. advised that five pieces of mail intended for R.D.’s grandchildren each had contained $20 cash inside the envelopes,” Keith wrote. “When recovered, the pieces of mail no longer contained the currency.”
Farleigh faces five years behind bars and was charged with theft of mail by a postal service employee, prosecutors said.
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