An Augusta man has been sentenced to three months in federal prison for stealing mail and embezzling postal money orders.
Jason K. Stockmar, 29, of Augusta was taken into custody following the sentencing hearing Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Bangor. In August, Stockmar pleaded guilty to the offenses and had been free on bail pending the sentencing hearing. Besides the three months, he will also have one year of supervised release.
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Stockmar was relief postmaster in the East Vassalboro post office when the thefts occurred between December 2012 and April 2013.
Prosecutors say he stole 25 to 30 pieces of customer mail in that time, taking cash, checks and gift cards from those envelopes.
Stockmar also took 20 blank postal money orders from a safe in the East Vassalboro post office and imprinted them for $19,547 to fund an order for gold bars that he later canceled. He placed the order in the name of a postal worker at the North Vassalboro post office who knew nothing about the scheme, and that prompted the investigation, according to the government’s sentencing memo.
The case prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney F. Todd Lowell, argued in writing that Stockmar should receive a sentence longer than six months, but did not specify for how long.
“The USPS has been able to identify several victims of his offense but it is likely that there are more and entirely plausible that his conduct (affected) at least 50 victims,” Lowell wrote in a sentencing memo filed in January.
Stockmar’s attorney, James Nixon of the Federal Public Defender’s Office, said in a counter memo that a sentence of up to six months was appropriate. He said Stockmar had been under financial stress at the time the crimes were committed.
“He has apologized for making (the) victims’ lives more difficult,” Nixon wrote. The attorney also said Stockmar already had paid $2,300 toward restitution.
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. ordered Stockmar to pay $3,160 restitution.
The USPS Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated the case, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
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