By Benjie Cooper
IG: @nuglifenews
YouTube: Lucid’s Vlog
A man from Newark New Jersey has admitted to stealing packages containing marijuana while working as a mail handler for the United States Postal Service (USPS) from May to November in 2017.
In a hearing held Friday, July 20, U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton charged 30-year-old Akeem Cauthen with one count of theft of mail. The man pled guilty and is currently out on a $40,000 unsecured bond.
During Cauthen’s employment at the USPS at the Northern New Jersey Metro Processing and Distribution Center in Teterboro, he watched for packages coming from California, Arizona, and Colorado. He would smell the packages and poke holes in them to look for possible cannabis products inside.
After he found parcels that contained marijuana, Cauthen would switch labels to reroute the package to a different address in Patterson where he would retrieve them at a later time. During the roughly half-a-year that Cauthen worked for the USPS, he stole around $32,000 worth of cannabis.
Stealing mail is a felony offense that can be punished by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine or twice the gross loss or gain from the crime. Cauthen’s sentencing is scheduled to take place on October 24.
