Feds: Mail Carrier Stole Greeting Cards for the Cash

Authorities say that a Florida mail carrier accused of stealing 4,000 or so pieces of mail around the holidays was busted by her own parents, and that she sifted through greeting cards to find cash due to her drug addiction. The alleged monthlong scheme carried out by 25-year-old Miranda Delee Farleigh took place in and around the community of Lady Lake, with one of her routes including The Villages retirement community. Per WTSP, a court complaint filed by US Postal Inspector David Keith says that on or around Nov. 23, a supervisor for Farleigh—who NBC News notes has been a contract worker for the US Postal Service for six years—came into the Lady Lake post office "with several tubs and bags of U.S. Mail that had been rifled."

Farleigh's supervisor informed the postmaster there that she'd recently found the unlawfully opened mail in Farleigh's bedroom, the complaint notes. The reason the supervisor had had access to Farleigh's bedroom in the first place, per the court doc: She's Farleigh's mother, and also a contractor for the USPS. As is Farleigh's father, who, along with Farleigh's mother, confronted Farleigh about the opened mail and searched her car, where they found more opened mail, the complaint notes, adding that Farleigh's mother then "relieved [Farleigh] of her postal duties and secured the recovered mail."

The complaint notes that, of the approximately 4,000 pieces of mail that Farleigh allegedly stole, "nearly all of the rifled envelopes consisted of outgoing mail that appeared to hold a holiday and/or greeting card." Farleigh admitted to Keith that she'd targeted residents' outgoing mail in her hunt for cash or gift cards, and that her heroin addiction was what spurred her actions. It's not clear how much Farleigh is being accused of stealing. Per a release from the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida, Farleigh is being charged with theft of mail matter by a USPS employee, which could bring her five years behind bars if convicted. (More postal worker stories.)