Former Ohio mail carrier accused of stealing and selling checks

LAKEWOOD, Ohio (WJW) – The U.S. Postal Service says a former letter carrier assigned to its Lakewood post office is accused of violating the public trust.

According to a federal indictment, former USPS employee Gregory D. Drake was allegedly stealing mail containing checks for large amounts of money and selling the checks to a group of co-conspirators he had recruited.

The indictment contends that the recruited suspects, identified as Darrell P. Smith, Jovaun P. Woodfolk, Deandre L. Couts and Dachi I. Wheat, would forge or alter signatures, cash the checks or counterfeit versions of them and then kick back a cut of the illegal proceeds to Drake through cash apps.

A leading authority on security and fraud says Drake’s scheme depended on the recruits to do the dirty work.

“He’s thinking, ‘hey, all I’ve got to do is hand the checks off to somebody, they get their piece of the action and how is it ever going to come back to me?’ because he’s not physically handling the checks. He’s not processing the checks. All he’s doing is unloading the envelopes with the checks to the criminals and they’re at a long distance and it’s very lucrative for them to do that on an ongoing basis,” Tim Dimoff said.

Dimoff, who also has more 20 years of experience in law enforcement, says a longtime postal employee like the 34-year-old Drake, who was hired in 2015, would have a keen eye for any mail containing checks.

The indictment reveals that Drake and the other members of the theft ring had their own lingo when communicating through social media, referring to instant cash as “instant cheese,” new checks as “fresh food,” and all types of checks as “all flavors.”

“All of these checks start to add up, start to add up to thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Once you do that, you start to really focus on what’s happening and not only local authorities, postal authorities but federal people start to get very interested in it,” said Dimoff.

Lakewood police reports obtained by FOX 8 reveal that in 2022, businesses in the city began filing complaints about checks they had written that never reached their destination, only to later discover that they had been cashed by individuals whose signatures had been forged.

The indictment reveals that postal inspectors then identified Drake as the common denominator in the theft of the checks and ended up catching him red-handed while he was stealing two checks totaling more than $20,000.

“You narrow down what mailbox, what area are these checks missing and then obviously you start to investigate those areas with surveillance, electronic monitoring. You start to narrow down exactly what mailboxes and/or people, carriers that are handling that mail in that vicinity and very soon you can figure out who’s behind it,” said Dimoff.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a statement about the indictment of Drake that reads in part:

“This type of behavior within the Postal Service is not tolerated and is a rare occurrence. It is important for the public we serve to know the overwhelming majority of Postal Service employees are honest, hardworking and trustworthy individuals who would never consider engaging in any type of criminal behavior.”

Dimoff says while the checking stealing scheme may have been lucrative in the short term, Drake was done in by his access to the checks and proximity to so many of the thefts and the electronic footprints that he and his recruits left behind.

“They become greedy and it becomes out of hand and it isn’t a hand crime to investigate,” said Dimoff.

The Postal Service says Drake resigned in March 2024.

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