Juan Enrique Caudillo accepted bribes for large mailings paid at a lower price. His frauds totaled almost $ 12 million that he will have to reimburse to USPS
A truck from the United States Postal Service.
Photo:
aomarks / Public domain / Wikimedia Commons
An employee of the United States Postal Service (USPS) in Los Angeles was sentenced to 8 years in prison for receiving bribes for six years. and that they caused the agency a loss of 11.7 million dollars, the federal prosecutor's office reported on Wednesday.
Juan Enrique Caudillo, A 60-year-old resident of Lakewood, South Los Angeles, has been in prison since December 2018 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud in March 2019.
You must pay $ 11,745,608 in restitution to the Postal Service.
The Latino, who retired from the USPS last year, agreed to hand over his pension as part of the restitution as well as about $ 140,000 in savings from a retirement plan for federal employees.
According to the indictment, since 2012 Caudillo received bribes at the Paramount Post Office where he worked to approve the shipment of large volumes of mail without payment or with a declared payment much lower than the actual rate.
According to the Prosecutor's Office, Caudillo's experience, "his special training and detailed knowledge of postal procedures" made the fraud "almost impossible to detect".
The former employee instructed his accomplices to use manual forms of mail, instead of the computerized system, to be able to hide the crime "between a mountain of paper" that otherwise would have been quickly detected by the information crossing, added the prosecution.
"Mr. Caudillo misled the Postal Service and abused its position of public trust by accepting bribes from merchants who did not want to pay for the use of the mail," said the district attorney. Nick Hanna.
Caudillo agreed to turn over nearly $ 700,000 in cash that was seized from his residence during a raid in November 2018, as well as approximately $ 50,000 that he had in various bank accounts and a residence in Eureka, in the north of the state, which he bought with money. received for the scam.
Ramón Arribeño, 61 years old, owner of Paramount's Premier Mailing services company and Armando López Torres, 63, Manager of the same, they pleaded guilty in 2019 for their participation in the scam and have already received federal prison sentences.
