New York Postal Worker Arrested at Border With Stolen Mail, Absentee Ballots
A postal employee in Western New York is in hot water after Customs and Border Protection officers found hundreds of pieces of stolen mail in his car during a routine vehicle sweep.
According to WKBW, a criminal complaint states that around 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, CBP officers came across Brandon Wilson, a West Seneca United States Postal Service employee since 2019, at the Peace Bridge Port of Entry in Buffalo. When officers conducted a standard sweep of his vehicle, they found a USPS box and roughly 813 pieces of mail addressed to other people.
Amongst the recovered mail, CBP officers found three absentee ballots sent to two Buffalo addresses from the Erie County Board of Elections, 106 pieces of political mail, 220 pieces of first-class mail and 484 pieces of standard mail.
WKBW reports that Wilson initially said the mail belonged to him and his mother, but he could not explain the mail that was addressed to other people. In a later interview with agents from the Postal Service Office of Inspector General, Wilson allegedly admitted to taking mail from his delivery routes and placing them into the trunk of his car, according to The Buffalo News.
"Beginning in September 2020, Wilson estimated he placed mail from his delivery routes into the trunk of his vehicle on more than four but less than 10 instances after returning to the post office from his assigned route," special agent Brendan Boone wrote in the complaint, according to The Buffalo News. "Wilson intended to whittle down the amount of mail in the trunk of his vehicle by placing a small amount of the mail into USPS mis sort containers in the morning before his shift began. Wilson last reintroduced mailings into the mail stream in this fashion approximately three weeks prior [to] the date of the interview."
The Buffalo News reports that Wilson was charged with delaying or destroying mail and was taken to the CBP Station in Buffalo.
The complaint noted that the mail primarily came from the zip code 14215, but some pieces may have also come from 14227, 14211 and 14214.