GREENBELT, Md. (December 6, 2010)—U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus sentenced Gilbert Ennis, age 56, of Lanham, Maryland, today to nine months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, the first six months of which is to be served in home detention with electronic monitoring, for stealing $59,958.21 in postal stamps from the Marbury Post Office in Charles County where he was the postmaster. Judge Titus also ordered Ennis to pay a fine of $3,000, and entered an order of restitution of $59,958.21 to be paid from Ennis' federal retirement account. Ennis has resigned from the U.S. Postal Service.
The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein, Special Agent in Charge Joanne Yarbrough of the U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General and Charles County Sheriff Rex Coffey.
According to Ennis' plea agreement, on November 23, 2009, Ennis called the Charles County Sheriff's Office and reported that he had been alone in the postal office that afternoon when a man carrying a gun entered the building, demanded that he open the safe and then ordered Ennis to get into the bathroom and close the door. Ennis told the sheriff and the postal inspector that a green box in the safe containing over $50,000 in postal stamp stock was stolen. A postal audit concluded that the amount of stamp stock stolen from the safe was $57,989.40.
Investigators began to doubt Ennis' robbery report, however, when they found a green box identical to the one reported stolen in Ennis' car. Further investigation revealed that Ennis could not have seen the robbers leaving the parking lot, as he reported, from the bathroom where he said he was; and the door Ennis said the robber entered from was deadbolted and could not be opened from the outside without a key. Investigators also found Postal Service money orders in the box in Ennis' car; confirmed that $50,000 of stamp stock could not have fit inside the box that Ennis claimed was stolen; and determined that $1,968.81 in stamps were missing from Ennis' drawer.
United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General and the Charles County Sheriff's Office for their assistance in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant United States Attorney Hollis Raphael Weisman, who prosecuted the case.
Source: Office of United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein