Two Temecula brothers were sentenced Friday to federal prison for defrauding the U.S. Postal Service out of more than $2.1 million by filing thousands of fraudulent Priority Mail insurance claims.
Anwer Fareed Alam, 36, and Yousofzay Fahim Alam, 34, each were sentenced to 27 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu, who also ordered them to jointly pay $2,135,739 in restitution, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Both Alam brothers pleaded guilty in February in downtown Los Angeles to one count of mail fraud.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, from October 2016 to May 2019, the pair filed a series of "fraudulent insurance claims via the USPS' website and falsely certified that packages (they had sent) contained items of higher value than they did and lied that the packages were lost or had been damaged in transit."
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"Yousofzay Alam also included false invoices, as well as photographs of goods that were not actually inside the parcels," according to an agency statement. "The Alam brothers used aliases and fake business names to hide the number of false insurance claims they submitted."
"Relying on the false information in the fraudulent insurance claim forms, USPS issued checks to the Alam brothers to cover their purported losses up to $100 in value, plus the cost of shipping,'' the agency said.
The Postal Service distributed insurance payment checks to the defendants at their homes and more than a dozen post office boxes that they maintained, prosecutors said.
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"The brothers then deposited the fraudulently obtained funds into their bank accounts,'' according to the government. "The total loss caused to USPS through this scheme was at least $2,367,033."
The USPS Inspector General's Office ultimately uncovered the scheme. The men have no documented prior felony convictions in the federal court system, according to records.
