Area mail supervisor admits jewelry thefts

United States Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announced to Historic City News this morning that a 48 year-old Acting Supervisor at the Jacksonville International Annex of the United States Postal Service pleaded guilty to mail theft.

Suzanne Quarterman waived indictment and now faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.

According to the US Attorney’s office, Quarterman began her employment with thePost Office in 1998. In 2003, she began work in the Jacksonville Annex and was involved in the processing of packages associated with “shop at home” businesses such as QVC.

Starting in mid-2004 and continuing through 2008 various shop at home businesses, whose packages were processed through the Annex, reported a high number of non-deliveries to their customers.

During the same time, other Annex employees recovered rifled packages that had been mailed from shop at home businesses and which originally contained women’s jewelry. Between 2006 and 2008 approximately 300 rifled packages from 300 different individual customers were recovered from inside the Annex.

In 2008 the Office of Inspector General determined that between 2005 and 2008, Quarterman pawned over four hundred and fifty items of jewelry using a false identity from a driver’s license stolen from a table inside the Annex this is used to repair damaged mail.

On December 9, 2008, law enforcement conducted a consensual interview with Quarterman. She admitted that she had been stealing jewelry from the mail at the Annex for the last two years. Her scheme was to examine the contents, steal jewelry, put the jewelry inside her work gloves, and then place the work gloves in her personal bag. Using the stolen license as identification, she took the stolen jewelry to pawnshops in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

Photo credits: © 2011 Historic City News archive photograph