Columbus OH: A former mail carrier who stole credit cards and blank checks from postal customers and used them to spend  $28, 976 was sentenced today to three years probation, He could  have been sentenced to five years in prison and fined $250,000.

Arlie O. Ruff, 67, was tripped up when he used his Kroger Plus card to accumulate fuel points on purchases he made with the stolen credit cards. That’s how investigators eventually tracked him down.

Ruff was indicted in July 2014 on one count of receiving stolen mail and one count of credit-card fraud. Under a plea agreement, the fraud charge was dropped.

Ruff stole the credit cards from mail along his Galloway and Far West Side routes — rural routes 9, 4 and 1 — between 2003 and 2009.

According to Columbus Dispatch:

Ruff had 23 years of military service and no prior criminal history.

He was a mail carrier from 1997 to 2009. His illegal activity stretched from 2003 to 2009 along his Galloway and Far West Side routes.

Gordon G. Hobson Jr., Ruff’s attorney, said his client’s gambling problem drove the thefts but said he has attended Gamblers Anonymous meetings. Ruff is raising two grandsons and has a steady job, Hobson said.

Ruff apologized to the judge, telling him that the temptations of gambling at the former Beulah Park racetrack had been too difficult to resist.