Mailman on Dug-Up Mail: 'Looks Like I'm Going to Jail'

11K pieces of mail were reportedly found in Michigan ravine
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 12, 2018 8:16 AM CDT
Mailman on Dug-Up Mail: 'Looks Like I'm Going to Jail'
Letters went undelivered in La Porte.   (Getty Images/Allkindza)

Neither snow nor rain can keep most mail carriers from their duties, but a too-taxing workload apparently derailed ex-Indiana mailman Kristopher Block. He's now charged with misdemeanor theft and felony "official misconduct" after allegedly not delivering 17,000 pieces of mail, the Indianapolis Star reports. What the former La Porte mail carrier is accused of doing with the backlogged mail: hoarding 6,000 pieces of it in his home, as well as paying an accomplice $50 per bundle to dispose of about 11,000 pieces of mail by burning it in Michigan. The still-unnamed helper, however, reportedly instead dumped the mail in a Michigan ravine, where it was found in February 2017. The USPS traced the mail back to Block, and he's said to have feigned ignorance when first approached about it.

But court documents note that once some of the recovered mail was shown to him, Block said: "Looks like I'm going to jail." He then admitted he'd fallen behind on his shifts and started taking undelivered mail home. One La Porte resident tells WSBT 22 it was a "crapshoot" on whether he'd get his mail or not during the six-month period in question—late 2016 to the time of Block's resignation in February 2017—and that he finally just got a PO Box. A statement from a USPS Office of Inspector General spokesman notes that "the vast majority of US Postal Service personnel are ... hardworking public servants dedicated to moving mail to its proper destination who would never consider engaging in any form of criminal behavior." Meanwhile, a La Porte post office rep says they're trying to figure out which customers would have been affected, per WLS. (More mailman stories.)

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