Former postal worker sentenced to prison for stealing mail, gift cards

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

A former postal worker accused of stealing gift cards and personal checks from mail drop boxes around Salt Lake County will spend 10 months in prison. Jacob Ford MacFarlane, who resigned from the U.S. Postal Service in April, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups on Tuesday. After his 10-month sentence, MacFarlane will have to spend 36 months on supervised release, including four months of home confinement.

Postal investigators began monitoring MacFarlane after several reports of stolen mail. Investigators tracked it to a Check City, where MacFarlane had altered it to be payable to him, according to the indictment. MacFarlane pleaded guilty to one count of theft of mail by a postal employee and one count of possession of stolen mail keys as part of a plea agreement.