Former USPS employee, co-conspirators stole $24 million in check theft scheme, feds say

A former United States Postal Service employee in Charlotte, North Carolina was sentenced to prison for stealing more than $20 million worth of checks, federal authorities said.

Nakedra Shannon, 30, was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit financial institution fraud and theft of government property, Dena J. King, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, announced in a news release Feb. 7.

Shannon's co-conspirators, 30-year-old Desiray Carter and 28-year-old Donell Gardner, were both sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for their roles in the scheme, according to the release. Shannon, Carter and Gardner were also ordered to pay $113,333.87 in restitution, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The three obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars in criminal proceeds from the mail theft scheme, King said.

Paste BN contacted Gardner's, Carter's and Shannon's attorneys on Tuesday but has not received a response.

What did Nakedra Shannon, her co-conspirators do?

According to an indictment obtained by Paste BN, from March 2021 to July 2023, Shannon was an employee at the USPS as a mail processing clerk at a distribution center in Charlotte. Shannon admitted in court that from April to July 2023 she conspired with Gardner and Carter to steal incoming and outgoing checks from the U.S. mail, King said.

Once the checks came in, Gardner and Carter would then sell them to other individuals, including using a Telegram channel named OG Glass House, the indictment reads. The three co-conspirators stole $24 million worth of checks, which included more than $12 million in checks that were sold through the Telegram channel, and more than $8 million in stolen U.S. Treasury checks, according to the court document.

While on Telegram, Carter used the name "SW1PER" and had several financial accounts at Coinbase, Apple Pay, SECU and JP Morgan Chase, the indictment says. Gardner used the name "RonnieHicks" on Telegram, the court document continued.

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How did the co-conspirators pull off the scheme?

To pull off the scheme, Shannon would provide the stolen checks to Gardner who used a private Telegram chat to send partially redacted images of the stolen checks to Carter, according to the indictment. Carter then posted the redacted check images for sale on OG Glass House, the court document says.

The three co-conspirators would even provide customer service for purchasers of the stolen checks on OG Glass House, including guaranteeing replacement checks if a stolen check they sold was "returned" or was "bad work," the indictment reads.

An undercover law enforcement agent contacted Carter in May 2023 and identified a check worth $1,561.22 that he wanted to buy, the indictment reads. A month later, another undercover agent reached out to Carter about a $230 check available for purchase, the court document continued.

Carter, Shannon and Gardner were all arrested in mid-November 2023, court records show.