Three Sacramento airport employees plead guilty to mail theft conspiracy, prosecutors say
Greeting cards, the kind your parents send you, packed with gift cards and money were stolen by three men who worked unloading bags at Sacramento International Airport in an elaborate scheme that could land them in prison for five years.
Amazon, Walmart and Target gift cards were among the haul two years ago, prosecutors said in a six-page indictment last year, alleging the men worked together loading and unloading air cargo for a ground services contractor. Some of the stolen items, still packed among hundreds of letters, were found wrapped in one of the men’s uniform shirt when law enforcement closed in.
The men – Raymond Hing Su, 29, of Sacramento; Domingo Kapuni Ene, 27, of Roseville; and Joshua Fine Hopoi, 22, of Sacramento – spent four months rifling through mail as an extra part of their job before a team of federal investigators arrested them in July 2018. Several months after their grand jury indictment, the three pleaded guilty Tuesday to taking part in a conspiracy in which they stole mail and other items including a checked 9mm pistol, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.
Prosecutors say that between April and July 2018 the defendants stole at least 95 gift cards and $3,295. The case is the latest alleged mail theft scheme in the Sacramento region. Others include the holdup of a postal worker with a BB gun, targeting of mailbox clusters and garden variety mailbox thefts.
The case began at Sacramento International Airport on June 1, when a postal inspector was told several trays of U.S. mail that arrived on an American Airlines flight looked like they had been tampered with. The men worked for Envoy, a contractor at the airport that handles mail coming in and flying out on American planes, according to previous Sacramento Bee reporting.
Postal inspectors set traps to catch the men, including sending a white Hallmark greeting card envelope through the system with a $20 Walmart gift card tucked into a graduation card. The card never arrived at the address to which it was sent, and inspectors could not find it anywhere in the mail loading area.
Video surveillance set up by investigators showed the men “sometimes working pairs, arranged mail carts around themselves to conceal their rifling and theft,” prosecutors said. Investigators saw evidence that showed the men appearing to conceal stolen mail inside sweatshirts, safety vests and other clothing and rifling through trays of mail, according to court documents.
When authorities zeroed in on the men, they found the stolen cards and cash in Sacramento and Placer counties.
According to court documents, Ene also used his position at the airport to steal items from checked bags, with one of those stolen items being a pistol, which Ene pleaded guilty to being in possession of.
According to a news release, the men are scheduled for sentencing on May 5. Each faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Ene faces an additional charge for possession of a stolen firearm, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.