tl;dr version: This mail carrier would steal people's credit card offers, fill them out in the resident's name, and then intercept the credit cards when they came in the mail. She would also prevent the billing statement from getting to them.
For nearly 20 years, Marsha Billock-Strahm drove the roads of rural Carey, Ohio, delivering the mail - birthday cards, catalogues, and masses of credit-card applications.
This week in federal court, the longtime letter carrier was charged with stealing some of the mail she was entrusted to deliver and fraudulently opening credit cards in the names of some of those on her rural route.
Billock-Strahm, 48, was indicted in U.S. District Court in Toledo on one count of aggravated identity theft, four counts of false credit-card applications, five counts of identity theft, and one count of theft of mail.
Authorities allege that over a four-month period in 2008, Billock-Strahm opened four credit cards in two names on her route by filling out the preapproved credit-card applications that were sent to their homes. Using the credit cards and the credit-card convenience checks, Billock-Strahm made several transactions totaling $12,573, the indictment alleges.
She then covered her tracks by intercepting the credit cards and statements as they came in, Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Uram said.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090515/NEWS02/905150347
tl;dr version: This mail carrier would steal people's credit card offers, fill them out in the resident's name, and then intercept the credit cards when they came in the mail. She would also prevent the billing statement from getting to them.