Two postal workers who delivered mail across East New York have been indicted on charges that they stole checks meant for their customers and deposited the money into their own bank accounts. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office says the scheme affected 10 victims and resulted in losses totaling $14,953.55.
According to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, Nicole Bernard worked as a city carrier at the East New York Station and allegedly stole checks totaling $12,465.80 between March 1, 2023, and January 4, 2024. Prosecutors say she and a co-defendant, Kenisha Hazzard, took checks from residents along their East New York routes and funneled the money into their own accounts. As News12 Brooklyn reported, the thefts amounted to nearly $15,000 taken from mail the two were supposed to deliver.
Hazzard, who was employed as a city carrier assistant at the same East New York Station, is accused of stealing seven checks totaling $2,487.75. Court records cited in the DA’s announcement note her alleged thefts took place in the latter half of 2023. Both women worked the same station, handling mail for the neighborhood during overlapping stretches of 2023.
Charges and Court Dates
Bernard was arraigned on October 6 and charged with two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, along with several counts of grand larceny and petit larceny, per the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. She was ordered to return to court on December 2, 2026.
Hazzard was arraigned Monday and faces seven counts of second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, six counts of petit larceny and one count of attempted petit larceny. The DA's office says she is due back in court on December 16, 2026. Both defendants were arraigned before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun on separate indictments and were released without bail.
A Pattern Seen Beyond Brooklyn
Check theft tied to postal employees has surfaced in other jurisdictions as well. A case highlight from the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General describes business checks allegedly swiped from the mail, altered, and then sold for cash online. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service says on its website that postal inspectors arrest thousands of mail and package thieves nationwide every year, underscoring that theft from the mail stream remains a persistent problem for the agency.
Separate federal cases elsewhere have involved far larger sums. In Indianapolis, the Justice Department says former letter carrier Destinee Ruffin pleaded guilty to orchestrating a $34 million conspiracy to commit bank fraud by stealing checks from the mail, with sentencing scheduled for October 27, 2026, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Indiana. In Texas, the FBI says a man named Vaughn allegedly recruited postal carriers to steal checks along their routes and then resold them to buyers through Telegram as part of a $24 million scheme. And in Pennsylvania, prosecutors say four men, including two former postal employees, were sentenced to prison for conspiring to steal and sell thousands of U.S. Treasury checks, according to the Justice Department's Eastern District office.
The Brooklyn case remains considerably smaller in scale than those federal prosecutions, but it follows the same basic pattern described across these cases: checks pulled from the mail before they ever reach their intended recipients. For now, the East New York case is moving through Brooklyn Supreme Court, with Bernard and Hazzard scheduled to appear separately in December.
