A former U.S. Post Office employee in Delaware who stole more than 100 packages from the mail over a course of several months will not serve any time in prison.
A federal judge on Monday sentenced Jasmine Holloway, 33, to six months of home confinement followed by two years’ probation. That was the sentence recommended both by federal prosecutors and Holloway’s public defender. Holloway also was ordered to pay more than $32,000 in restitution.
Holloway pleaded guilty last year to four counts of mail theft by a postal employee, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years for each count.
According to court records, Holloway worked at the post office in Marshallton from 2019 to 2021. The post office is just down the road from a reshipping company that helps customers ship packages overseas.
Authorities said Holloway learned that the post office received a high volume of electronic devices destined for the reshipping company. She also had been provided an access code to deactivate the Marshallton facility’s alarm system.
In August 2021, after moving to a different post office facility, Holloway began using the access code to enter the Marshallton facility after hours, according to court records. She opened parcels addressed to the reshipping company, took the electronic devices, and sold them to third parties.
Prosecutors said Holloway stole packages on 17 separate dates in a theft scheme that involved at least 120 victims, including 80 in Russia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Some of the thefts were caught by investigators on surveillance cameras after the shipping company filed a series of complaints with the Postal Service Office of Inspector General about missing and empty packages.
Prosecutors said Holloway’s crime was serious and a betrayal of the public’s trust, but that her limited criminal history and compliance with conditions of her pretrial release warranted home confinement rather than prison. They noted that she had obtained a new job and continued to care for her three children.
