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SALT LAKE CITY — A West Valley man who worked at the Salt Lake City International Airport is facing criminal charges accusing him of stealing gift cards being mailed to other people.
The 36-year-old man was charged Thursday in 3rd District Court with mail theft, theft by receiving stolen property and unlawful use of a financial transaction card, third-degree felonies.
In 2019, the man was an employee of Alliance Ground International, a contract company for Delta Air Lines Cargo at the airport. He was questioned by a U.S. postal inspector agent about a Walmart gift card that, along with a greeting card, was being mailed from Colorado to California but never got to its final destination.
The agent "learned that the missing card had been used by (the man) to make a purchase online," according to charging documents.
During another interview several months later, the man claimed that "on multiple occasions he found stacks of gifts cards" in rubber bands to stores such as Walmart and Amazon, and that he "used an unknown amount of those cards, including using them to purchase Christmas presents for his family," the charges state.
Those stacks of gift cards were collected by "other unknown individuals," the man claimed, according to the charges, and were taken from mail intended for other people. He also allegedly said that he would "sometimes find gift cards in mail that had gotten wet."
The postal inspector agent learned that between Nov. 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2019, the man redeemed gift cards that were purchased in multiple states at places such as Amazon, Walmart and Target, the charges allege.
