DAYTON — A 23-year-old man was sentenced Friday to 24 months in prison for admitting to receiving and unlawfully processing material stolen from the U.S. Mail, including as many as 250 checks, the office of U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker, Southern District of Ohio, said.
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Keith Dujuan Calahan, sentenced in U.S. District Court in Dayton, intended to use the stolen checks to perpetrate more than $250,000 in fraud, Parker’s office said in a statement released this afternoon.
Dayton area law enforcement began placing GPS tracking devices inside “dummy” packages in collection boxes outside the Dabel Post Office in Kettering, and, in May 2022, three such packages were stolen.
According to court documents, law enforcement tracked the GPS locations of the stolen packages and set up surveillance around an apartment complex in Dayton. Three individuals, including Calahan, were subsequently arrested. Calahan had two trash bags full of stolen mail matter, including two of the dummy packages.
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While executing a search warrant at Calahan’s apartment, investigators discovered 250 stolen checks, nearly $1,700 in cash, a $1,000 money order and two firearms. Two weeks prior to his arrest, Calahan had fraudulently deposited a $6,100 check, which had been stolen from the U.S. Mail and altered to reflect a different payee.
Calahan pleaded guilty in February 2023 to receipt and possession of stolen mail.
“The theft of mail can be hugely disruptive to the lives of those whose private communications are stolen, opened, and exploited,” Parker said in a prepared statement. “This sentence should be a warning to anyone tempted to break into a collection box in search of easy money that doing so comes with considerable consequences.”
Here’s an update, according to court records, on two of the three men arrested with Calahan in May 2022 in the string of area mail thefts:
* Leonard Blackstone, of Kettering, was sentenced July 5 in U.S. District Court to two years’ probation.
* Jeff Weaver, of Centerville, has a sentencing hearing in federal court scheduled for July 28.
We’re working to learn about the case involving that third man, Amond Turner, of Trotwood.
Each of them was charged with receiving stolen property and theft.
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