Crime Dyker Heights

Dyker Heights mail carrier arrested for hoarding 17,000 pieces of customers’ undelivered mail

April 20, 2018 By Paul Frangipane Brooklyn Daily Eagle
The Dyker Heights Post Office on 13th Avenue is not very popular. This story might explain why.
The Dyker Heights Post Office on 13th Avenue is not very popular. This story might explain why.
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Neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night — but too many letters, well, that’s another story.

A Dyker Heights postal worker was arrested Thursday for allegedly hoarding more than 17,000 pieces of mail in his apartment, car and work locker since 2005, cops said.

Aleksey Germash, 53, said he was “overwhelmed by the amount of mail that he had to deliver,” according to a criminal complaint charging him with delaying or detaining mail.

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The 16-year Postal Service vet was caught after inspectors were tipped off about full mail bags allegedly crammed into a Nissan Pathfinder. The next day, according to court papers, Germash admitted the car was his — and that he had failed to deliver the 10,000 pieces of mail stashed in it.

Officials said they later found another 1,000 missives in Germash’s locker and 6,000 in his apartment. Germash claimed he “made sure to deliver the important mail.”

The news that a postal service worker allegedly failed to carry out Herodotus’s famous mail carriers’ creed was no surprise in the neighborhood, whose main postal station on 13th Avenue gets a 2.3-out-of-five rating on Google.

“We have heard many anecdotal stories of people missing mail,” Josephine Beckmann, district manager of Community Board 10, told the Brooklyn Eagle. “I guess now we realize that there was someone in the post office not delivering mail.”

Chris McCreight, Councilmember Justin Brannan’s chief of staff, also said missing mail was one of the first things residents mention durring community outreach.

“The U.S. Postal Service has over 600,000 employees and the vast majority of their personnel are dedicated, hard-working public servants dedicated to moving mail to its proper destination who would never consider engaging in any form of criminal behavior,” said Matthew Modafferi of the USPS Office of Inspector General. “This type of alleged behavior within the Postal Service is not tolerated and when a postal employee betrays that trust of the American people.”

Germash is still being paid by USPS but is “not engaging with the mail,” according to a USPS spokesperson.

He made $25,000 bail after his Brooklyn federal court arraignment on Thursday afternoon and faces up to five years in prison if convicted. The good news? Residents of the Graybar Hotel can receive mail.


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