Postal worker helped steal hundreds of business checks from mail in Alabama, feds say
An Alabama man recruited a postal worker to help steal hundreds of expensive business checks over the course of 2 1/2 years, federal officials said.
Brian Christopher Williams III, 25, recruited Kalaijha Tomeco Ranier Lewis, 29, to steal checks from a Mobile post office between November 2021 and June 2023, prosecutors said. Williams and others then sold the checks on a Telegram channel, causing significant monetary losses to victims, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Alabama said in a March 7 news release.
More than $17 million worth of stolen checks were posted on the Telegram channel, prosecutors said.
McClatchy News reached out to Williams and Lewis’ attorneys March 11 but did not receive an immediate response.
Post office investigation
According to an affidavit, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service began an investigation of the Saint Joseph Street post office in January 2023 after receiving complaints from multiple businesses with P.O. boxes at that address.
In June, surveillance video showed Lewis — who had been working at the post office for about eight years — “manipulating the windowed envelopes” to look at how much checks inside were worth, prosecutors said.
Then on June 16, investigators saw Lewis take several pieces of mail and place them into the front of her pants before leaving for the day, prosecutors said. She was seen stealing mail again on June 23, according to the affidavit.
That same day, postal inspectors stopped Lewis and asked her to reveal the stolen mail. She took 26 business checks out of her waistband and admitted to stealing mail for Williams, who she said paid her between $2,000 and $3,000 for each stack of stolen checks, investigators said.
Williams arrested
Williams was arrested later that day at a gas station where he and Lewis planned to exchange the checks, according to the affidavit.
Prosecutors said Williams had over $10,000 in cash in his pockets at the time of his arrest, which he said came from the fraud scheme.
Deputies searched his car that afternoon and found 53 stolen business checks worth over $417,000 along with marijuana, bullets and credit cards that didn’t have his name on them, prosecutors said.
He was charged with trafficking in stolen identities, second-degree marijuana possession and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to court records.
Cell phone and social media search
Although Lewis and Williams both told authorities their fraud scheme had been going on for a few months, a search of their cell phones revealed they had been conspiring since November 2021, prosecutors said.
A search of their social media accounts also found evidence of the conspiracy, including a message showing Williams asking for specific amounts of money, according to court records.
“I need like 20k, 15k, 30k and up,” Williams wrote in a direct message to Lewis, in which he complained about a batch of checks being too low, according to records.
Williams was sentenced to about eight years in prison, and Lewis was sentenced to five years with a five year term of supervised release for both, officials said. A judge also ordered them to pay $234,246.63 in restitution to victims.
Mail theft
During the early COVID-19 pandemic, there was a sharp increase in mail theft complaints, according to a September 2023 report issued by the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General.
From March 2020 through February 2021, there were 299,020 mail theft complaints – a 161% increase “compared to the same period in the previous year,” the report said.
Suspected mail theft can be reported to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service online or by calling 1-877-876-2455.
This story was originally published March 11, 2025 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Postal worker helped steal hundreds of business checks from mail in Alabama, feds say."
