14 DAY TRIAL // Long Island residents who have not received their mail lately must know that their correspondence is missing because their postal carrier tossed it into dumpsters along his route.
US Postal Service worker Patrick Paskett, 24, reportedly threw out more than 1,000 pieces of mail in the course of one week just because he was too lazy to deliver them. He was arrested and charged with mail destruction, a felony that could land him five years in prison.
Authorities initiated the investigation and began monitoring Paskett after Seaford and Massapequa Park residents filed complaints about missing letters and packages.
On March 6, federal agent Steven DeMayo, who was assigned to track Paskett's movements, caught him in the act of throwing mail in the trash. The agent observed him tossing a stack of letters into a Massapequa garbage can.
When confronted by investigators last week, the mailman admitted he had trashed mail about 15 times since December. He even showed the investigators where he discarded the correspondence.
Officers managed to recover 1,018 letters and packages that he tossed out in four different sites between February 27 and March 6. They mentioned in their report that 144 of the letters recovered were first-class items.
“I really don't want to talk about this with anyone. It happened. I resigned. I don't work for them anymore. It's over,” Paskett told the New York Post.
However, a USPS representative says he is technically still employed until the case is finished, but he is obviously no longer delivering mail.
“The defendant, Patrick Paskett, further stated, in sum and substance, that he knew it was wrong to throw away mail,” a complaint filed with Brooklyn Federal Court reads.
After being arraigned last Thursday, Paskett was released on his own recognizance.
This is not the first, and probably not the last case of this kind. In 2013, an Australia Post mailman was found with almost 10,000 undelivered items piled in his bedroom. Mark Baguio failed to deliver mail between February 2009, and February 2011. The man pleaded guilty to two charges of theft and was sentenced and placed on a community corrections order for 18 months.
Similarly, in May 2010, Philadelphia police officers found out that a mailman was storing in his house 20,000 undelivered pieces of mail, some dating back to 1997.
Delaying the mail and stealing mail are federal offenses, so postal employees who abuse the system risk spending time in jail.