- Brothers Anwer Fareed Alam, 35, and Yousofzay Fahim Alam, 31, pleaded guilty to defrauding the USPS of more than $2.3 million through fraudulent insurance claims
- The scheme lasted almost three years and involved sending USPS Priority Mail packages with $100 insurance to fictitious addresses
A pair of California brothers have pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States Postal Service (USPS) of more than $2.3 million.
Anwer Fareed Alam, 35, and Yousofzay Fahim Alam, 31, of Temecula filed false insurance claims for packages shipped with Priority Mail.
The fraudulent activity continued for almost three years, from October 2016 to May 2019, with more than 22,000 claims.
The scam was simple enough. The brothers mailed USPS Priority Mail packages and paid $100 insurance coverage for possible loss or damage.
Brothers Anwer Fareed Alam, 35, and Yousofzay Fahim Alam, 31, pleaded guilty to defrauding the USPS of more than $2.3 million through fraudulent insurance claims
The scam was simply enough: the brothers mailed USPS Priority Mail packages and paid $100 insurance coverage for potential loss or damage before filing a false claim
The insurance claim checks were sent to several addresses in Temecula, including 15 different post office boxes at two different area post offices. The photo shows one of the two post offices in Temecula
They have set up 15 post office boxes spread across Temecula’s two post offices, one of which can be seen above
But the contents of the packages were empty or completely worthless – and Anwer Alam sent them to fictitious recipient addresses.
Yousofzay Alam would then submit false insurance claims through the USPS website.
He would falsely claim that the packages contained items that were of greater value than the actual contents, and then fabricate stories about the packages being lost or damaged in transit.
In an attempt to increase the authenticity of the claims, Yousofzay Alam then added fabricated invoices along with photos of goods that were not actually present in the packages.
The brothers would go even further by taking further steps to conceal their misdeeds by using aliases and assuming false company names, making it more difficult to trace the multitude of fraudulent insurance claims they filed.
The case, investigated by the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, showed that Each time the USPS received one of the brother’s claim forms, the Postal Service paid compensation to cover the men’s alleged losses up to $100 in value, along with the original shipping costs.
Louis DeJoy, 67, is currently the 75th U.S. Postmaster General
United States District Judge Wesley L. Hsu has scheduled a sentencing hearing for the Alam brothers for November 1. At that point, each will face a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
The insurance claims checks were sent to several addresses in Temecula, including the brothers’ home and business addresses, as well as to approximately 15 different PO boxes at two different post offices.
The brothers then deposited their ill-gotten gains into their bank accounts.
For example, in November 2018, the Alam brothers received a Priority Mail check for $106.59.
The scam was so extensive that USPS paid out at least $2,367,033 from approximately 22,330 claims.
The brothers, who are both on bail, will be sentenced in November, with each brother facing a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
The men have no documented prior felony convictions in the federal court system, according to records.