Postal worker caught stealing tax refund check from the mail in CT, feds say
A former U.S. Postal Service employee pleaded guilty to pocketing a federal tax refund check he was supposed to deliver, then later spent, in connection with a mail theft scheme in Connecticut, federal prosecutors said.
Ernesto Rodriguez Jr., 31, was going to be paid $100 for each tax refund he stole along his delivery route in Glastonbury, where he worked as a mail carrier from May 2021 to October 2021, according to court documents.
“Sometime after” starting work, prosecutors wrote in Rodriguez’s plea agreement, he got a call from an “acquaintance,” specifically his mother’s friend, who is accused of asking him to take checks issued by the U.S. Treasury Department from the mail.
Rodriguez, a Tampa, Florida resident who used to live in East Hartford, appeared in Connecticut federal court and waived indictment on June 17, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut said in a news release.
He then pleaded guilty to theft of public money in relation to a $4,943.17 tax refund he stole and kept in October 2021, according to prosecutors.
One of his defense attorneys, Katrina M. Ross, of Woolf & Ross Law Firm in East Hartford, told McClatchy News on June 18 that Rodriguez “fully accepted responsibility for his actions.”
“We look forward to representing him at the sentencing hearing which permits the court to grant him probation and which will also require that he make full restitution which he intends to do,” Ross wrote in an emailed statement.
Rodriguez, according to the plea agreement, “was supposed to” give the tax refunds he was asked to steal from the mail to a person in New York in 2021. The individual was not identified by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
As part of the scheme, prosecutors said he “gave his acquaintance,” his friend’s mother, “information about his route so that refund checks could be sent to those addresses, and was subsequently provided with approximately 10 names and addresses for checks he was supposed to take from the mail.”
Rodriguez stole one tax refund from his mail route on Oct. 23, 2021, according to prosecutors. He deposited that U.S. Treasury check worth nearly $5,000 into a bank account for his wife, prosecutors said.
The same day, he resigned from working as a postal carrier, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Two days later, he moved $4,500 into his personal bank account and used the money for himself, according to prosecutors.
He is facing up to 10 years in prison on one count of theft of public money, prosecutors said.
Rodriguez was released on a $15,000 bond, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He is due in court for sentencing, which is set for Sept. 24.
This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 5:49 PM with the headline "Postal worker caught stealing tax refund check from the mail in CT, feds say."
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