JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A 49-year-old postal supervisor was sentenced Thursday to more than three years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release for theft of mail matter.
The court further ordered Quarterman to pay $114,497.87 in restitution to ShopNBC and $45,049.36 to QVC.
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According to court documents and testimony at the sentencing hearing, Quarterman began her employment with the U.S. Postal Service in 1998. In 2003 she began working as an acting supervisor at the USPS Jacksonville International Annex. Part of the business operations of the Annex involved the processing of packages associated with shop-at-home businesses, such as QVC and ShopNBC.
Starting in mid-2004 and continuing through 2008, various shop-at-home businesses whose packages were processed through the Annex reported a high number of non-deliveries of merchandise orders to customers. Also, during this time frame, USPS employees working at the Annex began to recover rifled packages from within the Annex, according to court documents.
The rifled packages related to merchandise being mailed from shop-at-home businesses to customers. The primary merchandise stolen was women's jewelry. Between 2006 and 2008, about 300 rifled packages from 300 different customers were recovered from inside the Annex.
In 2008, the USPS Office of Inspector General determined that between 2005 and 2008 Quarterman pawned more than 450 items of jewelry, according to court documents. Further investigation by law enforcement determined that part of the pawning activity by Quarterman involved using the identity of another individual, according to the documents.
According to the documents, it was also determined that the majority of the jewelry pawned by Quarterman was jewelry stolen out of the mail from the Annex. Prosecutors said she took the stolen jewelry to pawnshops in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. They said Quarterman also explained that while working at the Annex she stole a driver's license and stated that she used the identity to conceal her criminal activities.