An Amazon online merchant from Yonkers has been accused of using forged flat-rate mailing labels to avoid $580,000 in postage.
Omer Bedir Korkmaz was arrested on July 13 and charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Korkmaz operated Metoscar Corp. from his apartment on Riverdale Avenue. The e-commerce business sells emergency food supplies, according to Amazon.com, including freeze-dried survival food and buckets of food with a 25-year shelf life.
Korkmaz allegedly used flat-rate postage for packages that were ineligible for the discounted rate.
Flat-rate postage may be used for items that weigh 70 pounds or less and fit in standard postal service envelopes. But sometimes shippers alter the labels by removing the FLAT RATE ENV wording that postal workers look for to verify the correct postage. Then the doctored labels are affixed to heavier packages and the shipper is still charged the discounted postage.
Postal workers noticed the discrepancy in Spring 2021, and for 55 days Korkmaz was watched.
He drove from his home in Yonkers to a storage locker in Mount Vernon, according to a criminal complaint prepared by U.S. Postal Inspector Eduardo Gelpi. He placed parcels from the storage unit in his vehicle and dropped them off at post offices in Mount Vernon and the Bronx.
Metoscar paid the flat-rate for nearly all of the packages, according to the complaint, even though they were not in flat-rate envelopes and the FLAT RATE ENV phrase had been removed from the postage slips.
The postal service examined 10,365 pieces of mail shipped by Metoscar from December 2019 through June 2022, the complaint states, and about 10,000 pieces did not qualify for flat-rate shipping.
Metoscar paid about $7.55 per altered package, the complaint states, but should have paid an average of $63.53 per piece based on the weights and distances shipped.
Metoscar allegedly defrauded the postal service of $580,000 in revenue.
Korkmaz, a citizen of Turkey, was interviewed by law enforcement in May 2022 and again last month, according to the criminal complaint, and he admitted that he paid from $200 to $300 a month to someone in Turkey to create flat-rate postage labels.
“Korkmaz knew that the postage labels he was using were counterfeit,” the complaint states, but he used them anyway “because he wanted Metoscar to make money.”
The complaint charges postage forgery, conspiracy to forge postage, and theft of government property.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Victoria Reznik in White Plains federal court released Korkmaz from custody upon posting a $50,000 personal recognizance bond. She directed him to continue, or seek, employment, but not as an Amazon merchant.
His public defender, attorney Mark B. Gombiner, did not reply to an email asking for Korkmaz’s side of the story.
