FIRST-CLASS ‘SCAM’
UPS mail redirected to Chicago apt.: feds
It’s the Unbelievable Postal Scam. A former hamburger flipper is under federal probe for allegedly filling out a change-of-address form to redirect mail sent to United Parcel Service’s Atlanta headquarters — including checks and packages containing valuables — to his tiny, onebedroom apartment in Chicago.
Dushaun Spruce, 24, is suspected of keeping the scheme going for about three months, pocketing tens of thousands of dollars, before authorities got wise to him, according to court documents.
The daily deluge of mail was so great that Spruce’s mail carrier even placed a US Postal Service tub outside his door to hold all the pieces, the documents add.
UPS’s mail was being “redirected by an unauthorized change-of-address by a third party,’’ a company rep confirmed to the Chicago Tribune.
The scheme started in October when someone submitted a written form to the USPS changing the private delivery giant’s headquarters address to Spruce’s apartment some 700 miles away in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, court papers say.
Spruce’s initials were first written on the signature line of the form — but then scratched out and replaced with “UPS,” according to the court documents.
Soon, “voluminous’’ amounts of mail were being delivered to Spruce’s pad.
The take allegedly included business checks and invoices, five cor- porate American Express cards in UPS employees’ names, the personal information of other workers and even letters to the CEO.
It wasn’t until January that an employee at Spruce’s bank alerted postal inspectors to the possible fraud.
The bank worker noted that 10 UPS checks totaling nearly $60,000 had been deposited into Spruce’s account, the Tribune said.
Surveillance video later confirmed that Spruce had deposited the checks, authorities say.
Spruce once briefly worked as a summer package “unloader and loader” for UPS in Chicago. According to his Facebook page, he also was a “former everything at White Castle.”
Inspectors interrogated the car- rier delivering mail to Spruce’s address, and he said he had been hauling loads of mail to the place for months, the court documents said. The carrier, who had sometimes handed Spruce the mail, identified Spruce from a photo.
Postal inspectors eventually retrieved “several thousand” pieces of first-class and registered mail addressed to UPS at the apartment, court papers said.
Spruce has not been criminally charged yet, but authorities say the investigation is continuing. He denies any wrongdoing. “I been having problems with my mail being delivered for months now,” Spruce told FOX32 Chicago.
He did not return a call from The Post on Wednesday.