Hunter
11/17/21
A Marion man will have lots of time to write letters after he was sentenced to three years in prison for cheating the post office of over a quarter million dollars in postage and making false statements on overseas shipments related to his internet business.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that US District Judge CJ Williams passed down the sentence last week after Bradley Matheny was convicted by jury in March on seven counts of postage meter stamp forgery and counterfeiting, and three counts of export violations.
Matheny operated an EBay businesss called “Mattheny’s” from his Marion home, shipping retail goods to people across the country and all over the world.
Staff at the Cedar Rapids Post Office alerted postal inspectors in 2015 after Matheny repeatedly would show up at the facility’s loading dock just before close with a big pile of packages. Prosecutors at trial said that Metheny shipped over 28,000 packages that year through USPS, and a review of the packages shipped in late 2015, 2016 and 2017 showed those packages had either insufficient postage or a forged postage meter stamp.
A federal search warrant was executed at Matheny’s home in 2017 and found unusual clippings of partial Priority Mail and First Class postage meter stamps. Working with EBay, authorities learned that he was exploiting flaws in the Postal Service’s electronic payment systems and getting Priority Mail treatment for his packages while paying only the First Class rate.
A postal inspector testified at sentencing that Matheny bilked the USPS out of more than $380,000 between 2013 and 2017.
Judge Williams fined Matheny $10,000, ordered him to pay over $256,000 in restitution, and be under supervised release for three years after serving his three-year prison term.