COBB COUNTY, Ga. — A postal worker in Cobb County has been fired after being accused of stealing thousands of dollars.
Deputies say she was stealing the checks from mailboxes at a Marietta post office.
Channel 2 Cobb County Bureau Michele Newell spoke with business owner victims who say before the worker was caught, they were left wondering where their money was.
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One of them told her that she had to close three accounts and switch banks. Until she is able to fully transition to direct deposit, she has to physically drive to some of her customers to pick up the money.
“l looked at my balance, it was minus $5,000 and I said, ‘That’s impossible.’ They said, ‘No, you wrote a check for $7,000.’ I said, ‘No, no,’” Jane Morgan said.
She said that she noticed the fraudulent activity after she wrote a check for $70 and dropped it into the mailbox outside of the Marietta post office on Lawrence Street.
“They washed it to $7,000,” she said.
Morgan claims that someone even tapped into her accounts using personal information from one of the checks she mailed.
“They moved $4,000 from my business account to my personal account,” Morgan said.
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Don Munn said checks from his customers never made it to him.
“They were signed over to people’s names. One said deposit only, but it totals about $30,000,″ Munn explained.
The Cobb County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that a U.S. Postal Service employee has been fired for the thefts, but did not release that person’s name.
“I do not believe charges have come forward and most of those charges would have to come from the Postal Service itself,” Col. Eric Yeager said.
A statement from the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Postal Service says,
“The U.S. Postal Service employs more than 625,000 employees and is the largest civilian federal workforce in the country. This type of alleged behavior within the Postal Service is not tolerated and the overwhelming majority of Postal Service employees, who all serve the public, are honest, hardworking, and trustworthy individuals who would never consider engaging in any type of criminal behavior.”
The Cobb County Sheriff’s Office Fraud Division says it is best to avoid mailing checks altogether.
Morgan’s bank refunded her money and Munns is still waiting for his bank to resolve his situation.
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