Ex-California letter carrier who stole more than $10 million in checks gets 5 years

A former U.S. Postal Service letter carrier was sentenced on Monday, Sept. 8, to five and a half years in federal prison for stealing over $10 million in checks from the mail, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Rashad Deon Stolden, a 34-year-old Huntington Beach man, worked in the Fairfax area of Los Angeles. From 2020 to 2024, he stole mail with high-value checks and debit cards from the California Employment Development Department, the agency that handles unemployment and disability benefits, according to the DOJ.

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Stolden used the money in part for luxury hotel stays, prosecutors said.

“[Stolden] seemed to think only of his own profits, trying to decide whether he should use his thefts to pay for a $13,000 hotel stay in Bora Bora, or if he should upgrade to a $20,000 stay in the Presidential Villa at the Conrad,” a prosecutor’s sentencing document said.

He worked with a friend, also a letter carrier, to sell the stolen checks to co-conspirators who would negotiate the checks using fake identity documents, authorities said. They purchased personal information of the people they stole the EDD cards from in order to activate the cards, the authorities said.

In one instance, in June 2022, Stolden stole a $7.3 million Treasury check and sold it to a co-conspirator who negotiated it at a Tennessee bank and got over $1 million from depositing the check, federal officials said.

Stolden pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud on April 14. As part of his sentencing, he was ordered to pay $1,627,291 in restitution.

Some co-conspirators have been prosecuted separately, authorities said. The former letter carrier Stolden worked with will be sentenced on Sept. 14.

Stolden was out on $50,000 bond.