The discovery in 2020 of a cache of state Department of Labor envelopes in a Yonkers hotel room has led to the arrests of three postal workers allegedly involved in a national bribery and mail theft scheme to steal millions of dollars in Covid-19 benefits.
Letter carriers Oscar Abreu, Rafael Grullon and Aldo Palomino Jr. were arrested August 11 – 12 and charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. They were each released from custody on $100,000 appearance bonds, in their initial appearances in U.S. District Court, White Plains.
In January, two individuals who were linked to the stolen mail at the Yonkers hotel — Yohauris Rodriguez Hernandez and Henry Fermin — were charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud for trying to steal pandemic relief unemployment benefits using the names and social security numbers of 159 people.
The investigation began with the discovery on Dec. 2, 2020 of 747 pieces of mail mostly from the New York Department of Labor, pre-sorted and bundled, in a hotel room on Executive Boulevard in Northwest Yonkers.
The room had been occupied by Hernandez and Fermin, according to criminal complaints, but when they decided to extend their stay they were moved to another room to allow a new guest to take the room.
The new guest notified the front desk about suspicious mail, and a woman who said she had been in the room called the front desk and insisted that she had to retrieve her belongings from the room.
The desk clerk called Yonkers police.
Officers canvassing outside saw Hernandez and Fermin walking away from the hotel, and a hotel staff member identified them as the guests who had occupied the room.
Police seized a cell phone with WhatsApp text messages and a notebook with page after page of names and personal identity details, labeled by states and listed by streets.
Nearly all of the mail was addressed to individuals who lived along three mail delivery routes in Queens that Abreu, Grullon and Palomino worked.
Hernandez had allegedly applied for pandemic relief debit cards on the Department of Labor website, using names and personal identifying information.
Investigators determined that she had visited Abreu several times in summer 2020.
Abreu, according to a criminal complaint, admitted to investigators that he had agreed to set aside mail addressed to certain people. Initially, he was paid $200 per envelope, and later $500.
Hernandez allegedly met Abrue once or twice a week to pick up the envelopes and pay the bribes. When she asked for more letters to be picked up, Abrue allegedly recruited Grullon and Palomino. He was paid $200 for each envelope they set aside, according to the complaint, and he paid them half and kept half.
Investigators identified 568 pandemic relief accounts among the letters found in Yonkers, according to one of the criminal complaints, for which the Department of Labor had authorized $16.1 million in unemployment benefits and paid about $3.2 million.
Hernandez, according to court records, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 39 months in prison in 2016, for filing thousands of phony tax returns and obtaining millions of dollars in fraudulent tax refunds, using stolen names and birthdates. In 2017, she was deported to the Dominican Republic.
