An Ormond Beach homeowner watched live on her phone as U.S. Rep. Randy Fine opened her porch mailbox and rifled through individual letters on August 16, 2026, then called police after recognizing him from the footage. She ultimately chose not to press charges, and no criminal case followed.
The woman told officers a man was going through her mailbox after she saw it happen in real time on her Ring camera while away from home, according to TMZ. Fine's office confirmed to TMZ that he was the person seen on the video. The CBS12 report on the incident, credited to a first account from the Space Coast Rocket, noted that Fine rang the home's doorbell and was wearing a red campaign hat and blue campaign shirt at the time.
Federal law bars anyone other than a postal worker or the homeowner from tampering with, removing from, or placing anything inside a residential mailbox, and it separately prohibits campaigns from leaving literature inside one, per the CBS12 report. Fine did not remove anything from the mailbox and did not place anything inside it, according to that same account, and he did not face federal charges, TMZ reported.
Why No Charges Were Filed
Under 18 U.S.C. § 1725, depositing non-postage mailable matter in or on an approved mailbox can carry civil fines of up to $5,000 per occurrence for an individual, or $10,000 for an organization, according to FindLaw. A separate and more serious statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1702, makes it a federal crime to take or open mail from a box before delivery with intent to obstruct correspondence or pry into someone's business, punishable by fines and up to five years in prison, per GovInfo. With the homeowner declining to press charges and no items reported removed, neither statute translated into an open investigation.
A Bitter Primary Reaches Its Final Hours
The footage surfaced and spread nationwide just as Florida's primary was closing out on August 18, 2026, capping a Republican District 6 race that had already turned unusually personal between Fine and challenger Dan Bilzerian. Fine won the seat in an April 2025 special election with 56.7% of the vote against Democratic opponent Joshua Weil, succeeding former Rep. Mike Waltz, who resigned to become President Donald Trump's national security advisor. Heading into primary day, Fine had raised $1.73 million and spent nearly $955,000, while Bilzerian spent roughly $386,000 after lending his own campaign $1 million, according to Florida Politics.
Bilzerian entered the race in April 2026 after an online feud with Fine, a rivalry Hoodline previously covered when the Instagram personality vowed to unseat Fine. That feud escalated well beyond typical campaign sparring. Fine reported a swastika on one of his own campaign signs on August 11, 2026, and Bilzerian's campaign drew widespread condemnation for antisemitic ads and verbal attacks targeting Fine, according to ABC News. A study by the Antisemitism Research Center found that 33% of posts on Bilzerian's congressional campaign X account between May and August 2026 contained antisemitic hate speech, reaching an estimated 23.6 million views, according to the Combat Antisemitism Movement. Bilzerian's content included references to Adolf Hitler and explicit antisemitic tropes, ABC News reported, and his campaign materials also featured AI-generated songs and pro-Hitler imagery that drew condemnation from congressional leaders in both parties.
Fine's Own Inflammatory Remarks
Fine has generated his own share of controversy during the campaign's closing days. On the same day the mailbox video was recorded, he said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, needs to be denaturalized and sent back to Uganda, and separately called Mamdani a jihadi. In 2025, Fine wrote that the Palestinian movement must be put down by any means necessary and compared the treatment of the Palestinian movement to the use of nuclear weapons against Japan.
A Sprawling Central Florida District
District 6 spans more than 770,000 residents across St. Johns, Flagler, Putnam, Volusia, Marion and northern Lake counties, including communities such as Mount Dora, Eustis and Lady Lake. Fine resides in the Melbourne area of Brevard County, meaning his campaign travel through Ormond Beach in Volusia County required heading well north of home turf. Before reaching Congress, Fine served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2016 to 2024 and briefly in the Florida Senate, and he holds bachelor's and MBA degrees from Harvard University, according to Ballotpedia.
Tuesday's five-way Republican primary also included retired Army Reserve Brigadier General Charles Gambaro, who spent over $348,000, along with Aaron Baker, who spent nearly $109,000, and Manuel Asensio, per Florida Politics. The mailbox video, while it generated a burst of national attention in the final hours before polls closed, did not result in any pending criminal or federal case against Fine, since the Ormond Beach homeowner who first flagged the footage chose not to pursue charges.
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