A former United States Postal Service worker from Cobleskill has been sentenced to probation and ordered to serve 100 hours of community service and pay a $1,000 fine after dumping and burying mail instead of delivering it.
Tanner Brown, 25, was sentenced in federal court in Syracuse last Wednesday.
He had previously pleaded guilty to one felony count of delaying the mail.
As a part of his guilty plea, Brown admitted that between January 1 and July 24, 2019, while working as a postal carrier, he intentionally detained and failed to deliver 5,833 pieces of mail.
Instead of delivering this mail to its intended recipients in Onondaga County, Brown admitted he drove it to Sharon Springs, where he dumped some of it in a grassy field and the rest of it in a wooded area underneath a pile of discarded tires.
When agents recovered the mail from those locations, they discovered that much of it was first-class mail and that most of it was wet, dirty or covered in bugs.
The Postal Service eventually delivered as much of the recovered mail as it could, and Brown is no longer employed by the Postal Service.
According to the United States Department of Justice, Northern District of New York, Brown was sentenced to 18 months of probation, was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, and ordered to serve 100 hours of community service as part of his sentence, which was pronounced by Chief United States District Judge Glenn T. Suddaby, who presided over the case.
This case was investigated by the USPS Office of the Inspector General, and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Michael Perry.