A federal judge in Maryland sentenced a man to 17 years in prison this week for robbing U.S. Postal Service mail carriers at gunpoint.
DeAngelo Lewis, 30, was sentenced for armed robbery of mail carriers, bank fraud, stealing mail and using and brandishing a gun while committing a violent crime. Following the conclusion of his prison sentence, he will also serve three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland said in a release Thursday.
From January through October 2022, Lewis and his co-conspirators robbed seven mail carriers while armed and while wearing masks as the carriers worked on their delivery routes in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.
The group stole U.S. Postal Service property that then allowed them to steal people’s checks out of the mail, before altering and depositing the checks at banks. Lewis and his co-conspirators stole nearly $1 million through at least 60 fraudulent deposits of other people’s checks, federal prosecutors said.
Data on his phone showed that Lewis looked up post office locations before each robbery as part of finding carriers to rob, federal prosecutors said. Cars that Lewis was known to possess and drive were also seen leaving the scene of multiple robberies.
Police identified Lewis and co-conspirators Marking Long, 24, of the District of Columbia, and Enrico Hood-Jackson, 32, of Upper Marlboro after seeing them on footage taken by surveillance cameras inside the banks where they deposited the checks.
Upon searching the Marlow Heights apartment where Lewis lived, law enforcement found items used to alter checks, five articles of stolen U.S. Postal Service property and around 1,500 checks that had not been deposited worth nearly $3 million, federal prosecutors said.
Lewis, Long and Hood-Jackson were arrested on Oct. 27, 2022, right after they had finished stealing from three public mail collection boxes in Potomac. During the arrest, police found a sixth article of stolen U.S. Postal Service property.
While Lewis was convicted by a jury in April, Long and Hood Jackson previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and bank fraud. Hood-Jackson also pleaded guilty to armed robbery and carrying a gun during a violent crime. The two are due for sentencing later this year, federal prosecutors said.
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