A U.S. supervisory postal inspector once named a federal employee of the year pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing mail containing prescription pills, jewelry, passports, collectible Playboy magazines and other items in San Jose.
Quan Pham Howard, 53, of Saratoga also pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in San Jose to possession with intent to distribute marijuana. He will be sentenced Nov. 18.
In his plea agreement, Howard admitted that, from 2010 to 2014, he used his position as a supervisor to order employees at a San Jose processing and distribution center to call him whenever cash, drugs, electronics, jewelry, rare coins, precious metals and other memorabilia were found loose in the mail.
According to the criminal affidavit submitted by the Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General, between April from 2010 to 2014, Howard instructed employees at the U.S. Postal Service’s San Jose Processing and Distribution Center to call his office or cellphone whenever valuable items were found loose in the mail. He reportedly told these employees that he was going to reunite the items with their owners.
The items Howward was accused of taking included a gun scope and silencer, rare coins, loose silver bars, vials of prescription pills, $5,000 in cash and a Joan Rivers collector’s box signed by the comedienne. That’s in addition to collectible 1980s Playboy magazines, Civil War pocket watches, a bayonet, buck knives and passports.
At one point, after being notified by an employee about loose mail containing marijuana, Howard took the drug, passports and “collectible 1980s-era Playboy magazines,” authorities said.
Federal prosecutors in San Jose charged Howard this week with delaying and destroying mail, theft and possession of stolen mail.
Howard tried to hide his actions from security cameras — at one point clambering onto a desk to disable a surveillance device — but despite that, authorities had numerous photos showing him stealing mail, authorities said.
via Postal inspector pleads guilty to stealing Playboys, pills
This is not new to me, The U.S. Postal service is corrupt in its entire structure. I work in the rewrap section at the Denver NDC, and I have made several attempts to show management of all the corruption going on in our plant, do you think they give a %^&?
No, they lie to you and say they’ll get back to you, but then sweep you under the rug. I have assisted thousand of our customers, and they know me by name. My employers
have taken away our phones, and moved us to a small cramped up cage to work all the mail that is damaged daily because of the lack of consideration of protecting our customers mail. Mail doesn’t have to be loose in the mail, it just the way that we accept and treat the letters, parcels, and non machine able packages. I have seen with my own eyes, our customers property trashed or sent to Atlanta’s MRC- Mail Recovery Center, simply because of the lack of managements poor managing skills. The business world today, is all about the mighty dollar, and not about good service. there are honest ways, “We” the United States Postal Service, can make a deceit profit, and avoid losing all the millions of dollars, for example; 25million dollars a day, and turn that loss into a positive. I have been with the postal service for over twenty years (20), and I do believe I have the answer, even thought it may hurt the feelings of the employees and management, it the TRUTH! There is a large amount of waste, we should go back to accountability. Materials can be requested
from our stores office on request. I can’t expose all my visions and ideas on this one comment, but you can find me at the Denver NDC, Rewrap Cage, I also have a power point presentation of all the things that’s costing the post office millions of dollar, and our customers. Hope to hear from someone soon, before its to late.
Riley Jones.
poster boy for the us postal circus’s affirmative action failure…………..get to watch it all come down for another 2 years. want to know how po mismanagement lost over $80 Billion since 2009……just look at that picture real close. think he has a college degree in criminal justice lol?
Since he is in management, he should just be allowed to resign. If he were a bargaining unit employee, things would, of course, be different.
He was an Inspector and broke the public trust,worse than a craft employee thief,so he should be fired.
Dope for a Dope !