Sioux City Man Sentenced To Federal Prison And Ordered To Repay Over $65,000
Contact: Peter Deegan
A man who falsely altered United States Postal money orders was sentenced October 30, 2012, to ten months in federal prison.
Larry Walters, 54, from Sioux City, Iowa, received the prison term after a November 7, 2011, guilty plea to altering money orders.
At the guilty plea, Walters admitted that during the period November 2004 through about October 2010, he worked in the print shop/mail room facilities at Morningside College. During that time, Walters operated the postage meter machine which was used to place postage fees on College mailings. Walters intentionally generated errant postage fees on envelopes and returned those envelopes to the Post Office claiming they were mistakes. Walters applied for and received Postal Money Orders as refunds for postage errors. After receiving the money orders, Walters would materially alter them by inserting his name in the payee area of the money order and convert the funds to his own use. Postal records showed a total of 156 refunds of postage were requested for Morningside College. The total dollar amount of postage refunds requested on behalf of Morningside College and paid in Postal Money Orders altered by Walters from November 30, 2004, through October 18, 2010, was $65,940.58.
Walters was sentenced in Sioux City by United States District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett. Walters was sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment. A special assessment of $100 was imposed, and he was ordered to make over $7,000 in restitution to Morningside College and over $65,000 in restitution to their insurance company. He must also serve a 2-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
Walters was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the United States Marshal on a date yet to be set.
The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office and investigated by the United States Postal Inspection Service.
Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is 11-4121.
