This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A man has been charged over a scam in which he changed the corporate address of the global shipping company UPS to his own small apartment in Chicago, rerouting thousands of pieces of mail.

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Dushaun Henderson-Spruce, 24, has been charged with mail theft and fraud in an alleged scam that saw items including American Express cards in the name of the chief executive and other board members being delivered to his address in Rogers Park, the Chicago Tribune reported.

So much mail was arriving at his seven-storey building that the carrier had to leave it in a US postal service tub because there was no room in the mail box, the Tribune said.

Henderson-Spruce, who spent a brief period in 2012 working as a package handler for UPS at the company’s sorting facility in Hodgkins, Illinois, was held in custody Thursday and scheduled for a detention hearing next week.

The scam began when Henderson-Spruce submitted a post office change of address form on 26 October to switch the company’s official address from 55 Glenlake Parkway NE in Atlanta, Georgia to his apartment at 6750 North Ashland Avenue, according to the charges.

The Tribune reported that Henderson-Spruce did not have to give any proof of his identity in order to carry out the scheme. The initials “HS” were written on the signature line, but were then scratched out and replaced with “UPS”, according to the charges.

A UPS security coordinator discovered the change almost three months later on 16 January. A week later postal inspectors retrieved about 3,000 pieces of mail from the apartment, the complaint said. The correspondence included letters addressed to the company’s CEO and executives, sensitive documents with personal information and corporate cards and cheques.

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Fifth Third Bank investigators found that more than 10 cheques addressed to UPS totaling more than $58,000 were deposited into Henderson-Spruce’s account, the charges said.



Henderson-Spruce has previously said it was a mix-up and his identity may have been stolen.