Flatbush Postal Worker Arrested For Hoarding More Than 40,000 Pieces Of Mail
Oh man.
Looks like if you haven’t gotten a letter in the past nine years, it could have very well ended up as one of the more than 40,000 pieces of mail that a Brooklyn postal worker is accused of not delivering and instead hoarding in his home, locker, and car, according to a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, the Daily News reported.
Joseph Brucato, 67, was arrested Wednesday after a supervisor noticed a stack of undelivered mail in his car outside the Ryder postal station at 2222 Flatbush Avenue on September 22 – and investigators ended up discovering that the worker had allegedly squirreled away about 2,500 pounds of priority, First Class, and regular mail that he was supposed to deliver to homes and businesses along his route in Flatbush, according to the Daily News. Some of the mail that was found dated back to 2005.
When agents from the office of the inspector general confronted Brucato about the mail, “he admitted that ‘he has been keeping mail there for at least six months and that on some days he did not deliver the mail intended for his route for personal reasons,’ Special Agent Michael Wu stated in the complaint,'” the Daily News reported.
Brucato’s attorney, Heidi Cesare, told Magistrate Vera Scanlon that her client suffered from depression, and he has since been released on his own recognizance and ordered to “abstain from excessive alcohol consumption,” the Daily News said.
Brucato, his wife and son are model tenants, said their landlord Grace Honovic, who saw cops swarming over the downstairs apartment and removing evidence on a pushcart. “It shocked me … and then I’m thinking, ‘Why would you want to keep all that stuff?’ He’s a mailman, you’re supposed to deliver the mail.”
A spokeswoman for the postal service told the Daily News that she’s not sure when the undelivered mail would be delivered.
Photo via Flood G.