RAPID CITY, S.D. â A Rapid City woman robbed of her mail is being credited with helping to catch a United States Postal Service employee who allegedly stole money, gift cards and other mail while working.
Authorities said Dennyce Korb took matters into her own hands and investigated what happened to gift cards she mailed to relatives after receiving little help from the postal service, the Rapid City Journal reported .
In January, Korb mailed gift cards to her daughter and son-in-law. After they never arrived, she contacted the postal service but said she was told missing mail was a common occurrence and that there wasn't much they could do.
"I didn't want to let this go," Korb said. "If someone was stealing my mail, they were certainly stealing others. There was a thief in the Rapid City Post Office."
She turned to police in Rapid City, who suggested she try and find out if the cards had been used anywhere. After bringing the issue to her bank, where she bought the cards, Korb received the full transaction history for one of the cards that was worth $150, which showed it had been used to make small purchases throughout Rapid City.
She brought the information to U.S. Postal Inspector Ryan Brandt, a federal agent housed in the Rapid City Post Office who handles drug investigations and probes into mail thefts. When presented with the transaction history, Brandt said he "took it and ran with it."
"Dennyce really made it easy because she provided all this information on where and when the cards had been used," Brandt said. "She truly did half the work for us. I'm glad she didn't give up on just taking the easy answer that this was just a piece of mail that was lost."
Brandt declined to discuss the specifics of how they identified a suspect, but the U.S. Attorney's Office on June 19 indicted Daniel Newman, a Rapid City mail carrier, on a felony theft of mail charge. He's accused of embezzling letters, post cards, packages, bags and other mail and stealing money and gift cards between November 2014 and March 2015.
A jury trial for Newman is scheduled for late August. Calls seeking comment from Newman's attorney, Stephen Demik, were not returned.
U.S. Postal Service spokesman Pete Nowacki said such thefts are a rare occurrence in an agency that delivers more than 158 billion pieces of mail each year to more than 152 million delivery points across the U.S.
