Philadelphia Postal Clerks Sentenced for Stealing Treasury Checks That Were Resold on Telegram
Two mail clerks took Treasury checks from sorting machines and two men resold them on Telegram, prosecutors said; buyers cashed about $11 million.
Two former U.S. Postal Service clerks who stole thousands of U.S. Treasury checks from sorting machines at a Philadelphia mail plant have been sentenced to federal prison, along with the two men who bought the checks from them and resold them on the messaging app Telegram.
U.S. District Judge Joshua D. Wolson sentenced the last two of the four, the former clerks, on Oct. 19, 2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said. All four had pleaded guilty in 2026 to conspiracy to steal government funds, theft of government funds and mail theft.
The sentences
- Saahir Irby, 28, of Philadelphia, a former mail processing clerk: 63 months in prison, $10,841,731.83 in restitution and $72,510 in forfeiture.
- Tauheed Tucker, 25, of Philadelphia, a former mail processing clerk: 42 months, $2,628,984.39 in restitution and $28,200 in forfeiture.
- Cory Scott, 26, of Ardmore, Pennsylvania: 70 months, sentenced Oct. 14, 2026, with $10,841,731.83 in restitution and $298,973 in forfeiture.
- Alexander Telewoda, 26, of Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania: 78 months, sentenced in August 2026, with $10,841,731.83 in restitution and $162,144.50 in forfeiture.
Each man was also given three years of supervised release.
How the checks left the building
Irby and Tucker worked as mail processing clerks at the USPS Philadelphia Processing and Distribution Center. Between June 2023 and September 2024, they took thousands of envelopes holding Treasury checks out of the mail sorting machines and carried the checks out of the plant, prosecutors said.
They sold the checks to Scott and Telewoda, who advertised them on Telegram. Once a buyer paid, Scott and Telewoda mailed the checks to them, and buyers around the country tried to cash them, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Over the course of the scheme, the clerks sold the pair stolen checks with a combined face value of more than $84 million, prosecutors said. Scott’s and Telewoda’s customers managed to cash about $11 million of them at financial institutions.
A figure that grew
When the four were charged in June 2025, prosecutors put the face value at more than $80 million, FreightWaves reported at the time. Irby also faced a separate mail theft charge tied to August 2024, the outlet reported. By the time the four pleaded guilty, the figure was more than $84 million, according to a May 5, 2026, release from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general, one of the agencies on the case.
The case was investigated by the USPS Office of Inspector General, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI and the Social Security Administration’s inspector general. The Montgomery County Detective Bureau, the Lower Merion Township Police Department and the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service also helped. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Rice prosecuted it.
Max Crime has also covered a separate case in Tampa, where three people were charged with trying to steal more than $2 million in Treasury checks taken from the mail.
