A Maryland mail carrier has been charged with theft after police say he admitted to stealing mailed items, including two rare coins worth nearly $3,000.
All told, Lorenzo Pugh, 32, of Greenbelt, is suspected of stealing several items from his Silver Spring mail route from March 2019 through this month, according to Montgomery County police.
Officers were first tipped off to the theft after a suspicious transaction at the Bonanza Coins shop in downtown Silver Spring on Jan. 2.
The store owner told police that a customer had come in attempting to sell two coins worth a total of $2,900. But the owner had previously received an email — sent to a number of local coin shops — asking them to be on the lookout for the coins since they had been sold and shipped to a buyer but were then, seemingly, lost in the mail.
Police said they later determined the customer who was trying to sell the coins hadn’t actually stolen them, and the trail eventually led to Pugh.
When questioned, Pugh admitted stealing the coins, according to police. A search of his home by police and U.S. Postal Service special agents also turned up several pieces of previously mailed property that Pugh had stolen from his mail route, police said.
Pugh faces a total of six counts of theft.
