United States of America v. Scott Kelley

A former U.S. Postal Inspector was arrested and charged today for allegedly stealing over $330,000 in cash from packages mailed by elderly victims and then laundering the cash and failing to report it to the Internal Revenue Service. The defendant allegedly used the stolen cash to pay for a pool patio and lighting, granite countertop for his outdoor bar, Caribbean cruise expenses and escorts. He also is alleged to have stolen cash from an evidence locker and then blamed a direct report for the missing cash.



Scott Kelley, 51, of Pembroke, Mass. was charged in a 45-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Boston. Specifically, Kelley was indicted on five counts of wire fraud; five counts of mail fraud; five counts of mail theft by a postal officer; one count of theft of government money; 23 counts of money laundering; one count of structuring to evade reporting requirements; and five counts of filing false tax returns. Kelley is expected to make an initial appearance in federal court in Boston this afternoon.



Kelley was a Postal Inspector at the Boston Division headquarters of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service. From 2015 until June 2022, he was the Team Leader of the Mail Fraud Unit, which, among other things, investigated lottery and other scams that targeted senior citizens and other vulnerable populations. In June 2022, Kelley was transferred to serve as the Team Leader of the Mail Theft Unit, a position he held until August 2023.



According to the indictment, USPIS ran a nationwide crime-prevention program, Jamaican Operations Linked to Telemarketing (JOLT), to disrupt mail fraud scams originating in Jamaica that targeted U.S. residents with false promises of sweepstakes or lottery winnings. Posing as lottery representatives, scammers contacted elderly persons and other vulnerable victims and persuaded them to mail funds to pay "fees” or "taxes” that they supposedly needed to front before they could collect their prize. Postal Inspectors working on the JOLT program were authorized to intercept packages suspected to have been sent by scam victims. However, they were authorized to open a package only with the sender's consent, otherwise they were required to mail the package back to the sender. If a sender consented to USPIS opening the package and the package contained cash, the Inspector was required to count the cash with another Inspector present as a witness and then have the cash converted into an official check payable to the sender.

According to the indictment, between January 2019 and Aug. 11, 2023, Kelley used deceptive emails to cause unwitting postal employees to intercept packages that a USPIS algorithm had flagged as likely having been mailed by JOLT scam victims and send them to him. In total, Kelley allegedly requested that approximately 1,950 packages be intercepted and mailed to him. It is alleged that Kelley opened intercepted parcels that looked or felt like they might contain cash, and that he stole any cash inside.



The indictment identifies seven victims who were scammed into mailing cash in parcels that Kelley allegedly intercepted, and that he opened the parcels and stole the cash. The average age of the victims was 75, with the oldest victim being 82. The victims mailed between $1,400 and $19,100 cash. It is alleged that Kelley met with one victim in person and told them that that he did not know what had happened with their package and that their loss was their own fault because they had mailed cash. None of the victims recovered their packages or their cash.



It is further alleged that Kelley used a postal employee's keypad code to unlock and enter an evidence vault at USPIS. Once inside, Kelley allegedly used another Postal Inspector's key to open an evidence locker and steal $7,000 in cash. It is alleged that Kelley wrote a memo blaming the other Postal Inspector for the missing $7,000, which resulted in a USPS Office of Inspector General investigation. It is alleged that Kelley lied to investigators when questioned about the stolen cash, and that he placed the blame on the other Postal Inspector – who was one of his direct reports.



Kelley allegedly deposited and spent almost $340,000 cash – and did so in ways designed to hide the fact that he had stolen it. Specifically, he allegedly used almost $160,000 of the stolen cash to buy postal money orders, most of which he deposited into his own bank accounts or used to pay credit card bills. On more than 20 of those money orders, Kelley tried to hide the fact that he was both the payee and the purchaser by falsely listing certain relatives as the purchasers. He deposited over $130,000 of the stolen cash into his bank accounts but tried to avoid bank suspicion by spreading the deposits over 60 dates using four different bank accounts at two separate banks.



It is further alleged that Kelley also used some of the stolen cash to pay for goods and services including: