The suspects lived the high life profiting from selling and using stolen checks, washing the ink right off
Desiray Carter, 24, was sentenced to 5 years in prison on February 6, 2025 for a scheme involving stolen checks worth over $24 million. Follow Charlotte Alerts on Instagram.
U.S. Postal Service employee Nakedra Shannon, 30, partnered with Donell Gardner, 28, and Desiray to launch the lucrative scheme.
From March 2021 to July 2023, Nakedra was employed by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) as a mail processing clerk at a distribution center in Charlotte.
From April to July 2023, she conspired with Desiray and Donell to steal incoming and outgoing checks from the U.S. mail. A man close to Desiray was shot in the head and killed in 2019 at the hospital, not related to the theft scheme.
Damon Bruce was close to Desiray although, not involved in the scandal, he was killed in a shooting
Desiray and Donell then sold to other individuals, including using the Telegram channel OG Glass House. The suspects stole checks totaling more than $24 million. The checks were wiped clean of their ink and then rewritten for large amounts of money. The checks were cashed at various banks before the financial institutions could figure out the checks were stolen.
Watch video of thieves taking the master keys from a mail carrier during a robbery
More than $8 million in stolen U.S. Treasury checks were involved in the plot. The defendants obtained $700,000 dollars in criminal proceeds from the mail theft scheme.
The U.S. Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, IRS-Criminal Investigation, and the U.S. Department of Treasury Bureau of the Fiscal Service helped in the investigation of the case.
Nakedra and Desiray were sentenced to 60 months and 54 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release. Donell was sentenced to 54 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
