HOUSTON — A former Houston mail carrier stole nearly a quarter of a million dollars from customers along her route in the Heights, prosecutors said.
They said Ashlee Humphrey Williams, 37, stole dozens of checks and credit cards from more than 50 customers along her mail route in the Woodland Heights area. The victims included homeowners, businesses, charities and even churches.
Williams has been out on bond since March when she was charged with felony mail theft.
KHOU 11 was at the courthouse Tuesday when she was placed in handcuffs and taken back into custody after prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss the previous charge. They said that a grand jury accepted three upgraded charges that included fraudulent use of identifying information.
"We began to realize the extent of the fraud was a lot greater than we realized," prosecutor Mike Levine said.
The majority of cases happened between 2019 and 2022 in the 77009 ZIP code.
"It was discovered over $220,000 in checks that were destined for businesses in that ZIP code had been stolen and wound up in the bank account of this defendant," Levine said.
Over $150,000 of that amount was bound for nonprofits and churches.
"She stole stimulus checks during COVID, she stole credit cards, she stole gift cards," Levine said.
Amy Graves said Williams stole credit cards from her in 2021. Precinct 1 investigators called her days later after they said Williams was caught using the stolen cards.
"He asked me to describe my mail lady and I described her to him, and he said 'Well, we've got her, we've got her on video. She was using y'all's credit cards at those two stores in the Humble area," Graves said.
Graves said Williams racked up more than $2,500 in charges on her cards.
"It's just hard to believe that somebody could do that to anyone, especially if you're a federal employee delivering mail, we trust you to deliver the mail and not steal," Graves said. "She needs to learn she can't do this to people again."
Her money was eventually refunded nearly two years later, but Graves said she's still wary of sending and receiving important mail.
"I really don't trust it's going to make it to the destination, it really has caused me to mistrust the postal system," she said.
We did some digging and learned that Williams had been convicted of two crimes, including credit card abuse, back in 2010.
We reached out to the U.S. Postal Service to find out if they knew about Williams' criminal record when they hired her. The agency told us they can't comment due to privacy concerns.