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Pamela Jo Rosas
A Beaumont postal worker has signed a sealed plea agreement with the United States government, admitting to the theft of up to $5 million in gold coins and assorted goods sent through the U.S. Postal Service in Beaumont over the course of several years, according to filings made in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Feb. 21.
Pamela Jo Rosas, 64, pleaded guilty to theft of mail by a postal employee the same day before U.S. District Judge Marcia A. Crone.
According to information presented in court, in April 2020, postal inspectors became aware that multiple valuable coins had been stolen after they had been mailed through the U.S. Postal Service in Beaumont. A subsequent investigation revealed that Rosas, a postal employee, had stolen the coins while sorting mail at the Walden Road central mail processing facility in Beaumont. Rosas was arrested a year later and admitted to stealing various items over the course of approximately three years, including large amounts of valuable coins.
Despite her alleged utterances to investigators at the time of her arrest, Rosas pleaded not guilty to the theft charges in court proceedings throughout 2022. This week, Rosas presented in court and signed a factual stipulation agreeing that prosecutors would have proven her guilt at trial.
“Specifically,” Rosas agreed, “the government would have proven the following stipulated facts:
“On March 3, 2021, Postal Inspectors conducted an undercover operation in which Rosas was witnessed taking mail matter from the Walden Facility and carrying the embezzled mail to her personal vehicle. Shortly after departing the facility, Rosas was pulled over and arrested for the theft of the mail.”
Rosas was under the eye of investigators after she was marked as a prime suspect in the embezzlement of coins from the facility dating back to April 2020, the factual stipulation further details. When Rosas was arrested in 2021, Postal Inspectors searched the postal worker’s vehicle and found “several pieces of stolen mail matters, and $8,060 in United States Currency.”
Rosas gave a full confession at the time of her arrest, and consented to further search of her property.
“Rosas described herself as a kleptomaniac and she confessed that she had stolen various items of mail through her years of employment with the Postal Service,” Rosas stipulated. “Agents searched Rosas’ apartment and recovered hundreds of collectible coins, and multiple pieces of electronic equipment, which included: cellular telephones, laptops, iPads, gaming controllers, a stereo system, a flat-screen TV and a mini refrigerator.
“Rosas admitted she stole these items from the mail.”
Nearly 18 months later, Rosas was indicted by a federal grand jury for a single count of mail theft by a postal employee. In the original indictment, Rosas was charged with committing a series of thefts from on or about Jan. 1, 2018, through March 3, 2021, that resulted in a total loss of up to $5 million to those who sent mail through the Beaumont sorting facility.
The terms of Rosas’ agreement with prosecutors are not available for public review; she faces a maximum statutory sentence of up to five years in federal prison at sentencing. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the U.S. Probation Office.
Two Houston men traveling to Beaumont to steal mail from residents utilizing the same post office, indicted federally in March 2022, were each sentenced to 37 months in prison for theft that amounted to just over $50,000.
Dontae Dewey McGee, 22, and Tyrin Terelle Robinson, 21, were named in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury on March 2, 2022, charging them with theft of mail, possession of stolen mail, and aiding and abetting from a February 2022 theft of mail from the Walden Road Post Office.
McGee and Robinson both pleaded guilty to mail theft, and agreed to pay restitution in excess of $55,000 to a host of local financial institutions for checks stolen from clients of CommunityBank of Texas, DuGood Federal Credit Union, Hancock Whitney, Texas First Bank, UBS and Bank of America.