St. Louis USPS Supervisor Pleads Guilty to Stealing $369,000 in Checks

In 2023, Benita Randle — a supervisory employee at the U.S. Postal Service's St. Louis Processing and Distribution Center in St. Louis, Missouri — pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri to one federal count of theft of mail by a postal employee after investigators traced 89 stolen checks worth $369,248 back to her badge access at the regional mail hub. Between September and October 2023, Randle used her supervisory authority over incoming letter mail to divert envelopes containing checks — including tax refunds, business payments, and personal disbursements — and hand them to co-defendant John Harrison, 26, of Black Jack, Missouri, who opened the envelopes and removed the payments. The scheme was not uncovered through any postal audit or internal flag: investigators found the stolen checks inside a vehicle that had been repossessed over an unrelated loan default, a wholly accidental discovery that allowed federal prosecutors to trace the paper trail directly back to the distribution center and Randle's access. Harrison previously pleaded guilty to possession of stolen mail. Both defendants face up to five years in federal prison and fines of up to $250,000. Among the 89 checks diverted was money that had already been earned, owed, or legally awarded to its intended recipients — payments that never arrived because a supervisor entrusted with protecting the mail was pulling them out of the flow instead. ---- Disclaimer: This video is a dramatization based on real events. Some visual content was created with artificial intelligence assistance. Some details have been fictionalized and all names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.