A man who stole at least $24 million in checks with his postal worker girlfriend and another woman will spend 4 1/2 years in federal prison, a judge ruled Thursday.
As a 27-year-old, Donnell Gardner was involved in a 2023 scheme where the trio posted $12 million in stolen checks to “OG Glass Ceiling,” an online channel on the Telegram app.
There, people could buy the checks to cash them or try to replicate them, prosecutors said Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
The scheme “violated the fundamental expectation of safety” in the United States Postal Service, they said.
Gardner’s girlfriend and USPS worker Nakedra Shannon, 29, would steal the checks from the mail, and Desiray Carter, 24, would post them online after Gardner redacted some information, according to court documents. When someone bought the check, they would get the unredacted version.
The group made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the scheme, which lasted from April 2023 to July 2023. Officers arrested them in November.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell ordered Gardner and the women to pay more than $100,000 in restitution. The largest sum — more than $35,000 — will go to the Carolina Center for Rheumatology & Arthritis Care. About $9,000 will go to Rio Rancho Public Schools in New Mexico.
It was a “serious and selfish offense,” Bell said in court.
“A lot of people think this is a victimless crime, but there were folks waiting for government bills, businesses thinking they’d paid their bills to vendors,” Bell said. “The ripple effect is a lot.”
The theft also included at least $8 million in U.S. Treasury checks, according to the indictment.
Gardner pleaded guilty in January to theft of government property and aiding theft of government and to conspiracy to commit financial institution fraud. He will serve 54 months in prison and three years supervised release for the charges, Bell said.
Shannon pleaded guilty to the same crimes in May, but Carter has maintained her not guilty plea since being arrested in November.
Gardner’s defense attorney, Rick Winiker, said Gardner was “all too human” when he gave into temptation and got involved in the scheme. Gardner grew up in a “dangerous environment” and made an “egregious mistake,” Winiker said.
In court, Gardner apologized to the victims and his family.
“I wasn’t raised like that,” he said, as his family — including the grandmother who raised him — sat behind him.
Gardner, his family and attorney declined to be interviewed by the Observer following the hearing.
Bell said he did not factor a 2017 offense, possession of marijuana, into Gardner’s sentencing. If Bell had given weight to it, guidelines would have recommended Gardner serve a minimum of five years and three months for the combined charges. He had an otherwise clean record.
“It strikes the court that that kind of offense, that long ago, doesn’t reflect who you are,” the judge said.
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