It is hard not to laugh at this story. Due dilgence on the part of the USPS. I would like to see what John Stassels could do with a story like this. Here is the story:

Updated at 4:37 p.m. ET

As federal crimes go, this one seems to have been ridiculously easy to pull off.

Dushaun Henderson-Spruce submitted a U.S. Postal Service change of address form on Oct. 26, 2017, according to court documents. He requested changing a corporation's mailing address from an address in Atlanta to the address of his apartment on Chicago's North Side.

The post office duly updated the address, and Henderson-Spruce allegedly began receiving the company's mail — including checks. It went on for months. Prosecutors say he deposited some $58,000 in checks improperly forwarded to his address.

The corporation isn't named in the court documents, but the Chicago Tribune reports that it's the shipping company UPS.

In a statement to NPR, UPS said it "was notified that some U.S. mail, intended for UPS employees at the company's headquarters address, was redirected by an unauthorized change of address by a third party. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) corrected the issue and the USPS Postal Inspector is investigating the incident."


Dushaun Henderson-Spruce in a November 2016 police photo.
Evanston (Ill.) Police Department
Henderson-Spruce allegedly messed up the form a little. "Henderson-Spruce did not identify himself on the one-page form. At first, the initials 'HS' were written on the signature line, but the initials were then scratched out and replaced with 'UPS,' according to the charges," the Tribune reports.

But that was apparently good enough for the U.S. Postal Service. Henderson-Spruce began receiving "[s]everal thousand pieces of First Class US mail and registered mail" addressed to the corporation, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

For nearly three months, mail addressed to UPS's corporate headquarters was forwarded to Henderson-Spruce's apartment. He received so much mail that the mail carrier had to leave it in a USPS tub outside his door, the Tribune reports.

The mail carrier told investigators that "voluminous" amounts of company mail were delivered to Henderson-Spruce, sometimes handed to him directly.

The mail contained personal identifying information of employees, as well as business checks and invoices, according to the affadavit. He was also sent American Express corporate credit cards. Henderson-Spruce allegedly deposited into his bank account some 10 checks addressed to the company, totaling approximately $58,000.

This went on until Jan. 16, when UPS security flagged the situation to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

On Jan. 25, postal inspectors searched Henderson-Spruce's apartment in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood and found about 3,000 pieces of mail addressed to the company in Atlanta, court documents say. He reportedly told investigators that he had worked part-time at a company facility in 2012 or so.

The Tribune spoke briefly with Henderson-Spruce outside his apartment building and reported that he "hinted that he'd received the UPS mail as a result of a mix-up that was not his fault and that his identity may have been stolen, but he declined to elaborate."

In November 2016, police in nearby Evanston, Ill., charged Henderson-Spruce with one count of misdemeanor bank fraud, for possession of a stolen check.

Henderson-Spruce now faces federal charges of mail theft, which carries a maximum sentence of five years, and mail fraud, which can be up to 20.

While this case is eye-popping — no one at the post office thought it weird that a guy was getting thousands of pieces of a company's mail forwarded to his apartment? — there have been many reports of regular people having their mailing addresses changed without their knowledge.

KPIX, a CBS affiliate in San Francisco, reported in November that it had filed Freedom of Information Act requests with multiple branches of the Postal Service. It learned that the Postal Inspection Service had received 17,077 complaints "relating to fraudulent address changes" in the past year and that the USPS had received "approximately 46,058 inquiries from customers concerning the validity of the change-of-address order" since January 2016.

In a statement to NPR, the USPS says it processed nearly 37 million change-of-address requests last year, and not all change-of-address complaints turn out to be fraud:

"The rate of suspicious transactions reported by customers is less than 1/10 of 1 percent and many of the complaints are determined not to be related to fraud. A number of these complaints can be traced to domestic or other disputes between families and friends, who have access as a result of their relationship to information which allows one to forward mail. Still others can be attributed to service-related issues.

"We are continuously implementing security enhancements to enhance the security of our change of address process. We continue to assess these options, as we determine the best alternatives to protect the needs of our customers."

The Postal Service encourages customers to retrieve their mail on a daily basis or monitor it online. "Any suspicious activity, or non-receipt of mail over a couple days should be reported to their local post office, or to our federal law enforcement arm, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service."

LINK:https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/10/610102872/man-allegedly-used-change-of-address-form-to-move-ups-headquarters-to-his-apartm

Thanks I had trouble with the link.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Thanks I had trouble with the link.

My pleasure sir.

Wicked and wicked funny.

Did he get deliveries any quicker?

Why was only some of the mail redirected? And didn't UPS get a letter confirming the change of address? I did the last two times I moved.

quote:

Originally posted by Dallas239:
Why was only some of the mail redirected? And didn't UPS get a letter confirming the change of address? I did the last two times I moved.

The USPS is spotty at getting all of the mail forwarded.

On your second question, UPS should have received notice. Likely a case of not my problem by someone at UPS. Probably dropped it in the circular filing cabinet.

This is funny. I know a guy high up in the ups chain of command. I'll be ribbing him on this come Saturday.

I did something along the same lines, by accident. It was caught shortly after. When my brother passed away he was in a nursing home getting his mail sent to the home. I'm the executor of his estate and needed to get his mail. I did a change of address for him from the nursing home to my house. Unfortunately all the mail going to the nursing home was changed to my address.

The idiot letter carrier that is delivering tubs and tubs of UPS mail, to an apartment, was just doing their job, and doing it well. Why question some stupidity like this?

quote:

Originally posted by bubbatime:
The idiot letter carrier that is delivering tubs and tubs of UPS mail, to an apartment, was just doing their job, and doing it well. Why question some stupidity like this?

This is just another example of our wasted tax dollars on government inefficiency and incompetence. I am no fan of our postal system and would like to see it privatized.