In the past five years, 2,848 U.S. Postal Service carriers, clerks and truckers have been convicted of charges relating to mail theft. In Florida alone, they stole cash, checks, gift cards, diamond rings, computers, gaming devices and a microwave oven.

One such case led postal clerk Angela LoBianco Hernandez, 28, to a Tampa courtroom on Nov. 21 to answer for keeping an iPad after accepting payment for its safe delivery.

“I blame nobody for this but myself,” she told U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo, who put her on probation for three years.

Tampa mail clerk Marguerite Woodson pleaded guilty Nov. 18 to pilfering up to $1,500 from Nielsen survey envelopes. Carrier Shalanda Johnson admitted in October to stealing a Walmart gift card on her Sulphur Springs route. New Tampa carrier Corey Gordon estimated that he took as many as 20 gift cards before he was stopped in the spring.

On a bigger scale, recently filed court records suggest that a postal employee — not yet publicly named — was at the heart of a 2012 heist that left hundreds of Pinellas County retirees without their Social Security checks.

Small numbers of carriers have even conspired with stolen identity tax refund filers, defrauding the government while drawing a government paycheck.

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