A group of mail heisters got into a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme by being offered $200-$500 per letter or parcel they stole. 

It was going well for the team until one of them, allegedly the ringleader, Yohauris Rodriguez Hernandez, left a stack of mail in a hotel room accidentally and got discovered. 

She ran back when she realized she forgot it, but it was too late. Police had been called. 

The plan started in 2020 when Hernandez allegedly recruited the Queens, New York mail thief wannabes, Oscar Abreu, Rafael Grullon and Aldo Palomino Jr., to steal mail from the New York Department of Labor, and resulted in a COVID-19 benefit scam, according to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. 

One of the postal carriers, Oscar Abreu, agreed to be paid $200 per package or letter, but got brazen and managed to get $500 per piece, according to the complaint that was unsealed last week.

The sneaky plan by the alleged boss, Hernandez, was to file fraudulent unemployment-benefit claims, and have the mail carriers steal the payouts from the Department of Labor when they were mailed to the recipients. More than 500 claims were filed, amounting to more than $3 million in payouts. 

Your tax dollars at work. 

“It is a sad day when postal employees allegedly aid other conspirators to commit identity theft,” Postal Inspector in Charge, Daniel Brubaker, said in a statement. 

“Their actions affected hundreds of innocent victims by enabling their fellow criminals to illegally receive Covid-19 unemployment benefits through the US Mail,” he added. “These letter carriers have betrayed the public and showed a total disregard for honesty and the public trust that was placed with them.”

The schemers each could get a maximum of 25 years in prison upon conviction. The head of the scheme, Hernandez, was deported back to her home country, the Dominican Republic.