Former Postal Service Employee Sentenced for Stealing Mail

Baltimore, Maryland - U.S. District Judge Ellen L. Hollander sentenced Deborah Jean Gibson, age 57, of Windsor Mill, Maryland today to a year and a day in prison followed by three years of supervised relief for theft of mail by a postal service employee. Judge Hollander also ordered Gibson to pay restitution of $1,215.39.

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Special Agent in Charge Paul Bowman of the U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General (OIG).

According to her plea agreement, Gibson was a U.S. Postal Service employee for approximately 13 years. Gibson worked as a mail processing clerk at the Linthicum facility, manually feeding mail into a delivery bar code sorter, and preparing mail for delivery to postal customers.

In November 2011, complaints were received that greeting cards containing gift cards that had been processed through the Linthicum facility were not delivered. In February 2012, a stack of opened greeting cards were found in the facility and identified as having been processed by the machine operated by Gibson. Thereafter, on two occasions, Postal Service OIG agents observed Gibson stealing gift cards from the mail and placing the contents into her pockets or purse.

After Gibson was seen stealing mail again on May 3, 2012, Postal Service OIG agents confronted her and recovered the stolen mail from her purse. Federal search warrants executed at Gibson’s car and residence recovered additional stolen mail. In all, 71 mail pieces and 50 gift cards/personal checks were recovered.

Gibson admitted that she stole from over 250 victims, resulting in an attempted loss of between $10,000 and $30,000.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein praised the U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General for its work in the investigation and thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Rachel M. Yasser, who prosecuted the case.