Lawn care worker took 39 pieces of mail worth $171,000. His next mail address: prison
An opportunistic criminal grab will snatch at least 10 months of freedom from the life of a West Palm Beach man who pleaded guilty to mail theft.
Marchellus Wilbon, 34, was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison Friday, just over five months after the July 15 morning he opened a Lantana mailbox to return an open envelope with a check and found a pile of checks.
The mailbox on South Atlantic Drive contained 39 checks worth $171,599. They’d been put there by the homeowner for pickup by the U.S. Postal Service worker on that route. Wilbon, working in the area as a lawn care maintenance worker, admitted he decided to preempt the official pickup with his own.
Wilbon’s admission of facts says the homeowner, “H.B.,” came back out to put another check in the mailbox and found it empty. “H.B.” had the cellphone number of the area’s regular mail carrier. The mailman said, no, he hadn’t been by to get the mail yet.
Meanwhile, Lantana police already were on the way, alerted to Wilbon’s theft by a pool serviceman working on the street. After cops set up a perimeter and caught Wilbon, he told them he hid the checks in a blue bag he put behind the center seat of his company truck.
This story was originally published December 22, 2019 at 6:09 PM.
