Two brothers from California pleaded guilty on Friday to charges alleging that they defrauded millions of dollars from the United States Postal Service (USPS) using an insurance scheme.
Anwer Fareed Alam, 35, and Yousofzay Fahim Alam, 31, of Temecula pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges on Friday, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California. The pair were accused of cashing more than $2.3 million in checks from the USPS by submitting numerous fraudulent insurance claims for damaged or missing packages.
According to the findings of an investigation carried out by the USPS Office of Inspector General, from 2016 to 2019, the brothers used made-up names and addresses to acquire USPS Priority Mail packages and postage materials, which include insurance policies in the event that the goods are lost or damaged during shipment.
In order to profit from the scheme, the brothers claimed that the packages contained goods of a higher value than what they had actually shipped, maintaining approximately 15 P.O. boxes throughout Temecula. This scheme involved the use of fake photos of the goods they claimed to have shipped and falsified invoices. Over the years, they are estimated to have cashed thousands of insurance checks obtained through fraudulent means.
Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Postal Service via email on Sunday afternoon for comment. Any responses received will be added to this article in a later update.
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“Anwer Alam wrapped empty packages or packages containing little or no value and then sent them via Priority Mail to fake recipients at fictitious addresses,” Ciaran McEvoy, a public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s office, explained in a statement. “Yousofzay Alam then submitted to USPS fraudulent insurance claims via the Postal Service’s website and falsely certified that the packages contained items of higher value than they did and lied that the packages were lost or had been damaged in transit.”
McEvoy also wrote that Yousofzay Alam “included false invoices as well as photographs of goods that were not actually inside the parcels. The Alam brothers used aliases and fake business names to hide the number of false insurance claims they submitted.”
He continued: “Relying on the false information in the fraudulent insurance claim forms, USPS issued checks to the Alam brothers to cover their purported losses up to $100 in value plus the cost of shipping. USPS sent the insurance claim checks by mail to the Alam brothers to various addresses in Temecula, which included their home addresses, their business addresses, and approximately 15 different post office boxes at two different post offices. The brothers then deposited the fraudulently obtained funds into their bank accounts.”
U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu set a November 1 sentencing date for the brothers, who each face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
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