Two California brothers plead guilty to defrauding USPS out of $2.3MILLION by saying their 22,300 parcels weren't delivered - as they claimed $100 in insurance money each time

• Brothers Anwer Fareed Alam, 35, and Yousofzay Fahim Alam, 31, pleaded guilty to defrauding the USPS of over $2.3 million through fraudulent insurance claims 
• The scheme went on for almost three years and involved sending USPS Priority Mail packages with $100 insurance to fictitious addresses

A pair of California brothers have pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States Postal Service (USPS) of over $2.3 million.

Anwer Fareed Alam,  35, and Yousofzay Fahim Alam, 31, from Temecula submitted  fake insurance claims for packages sent Priority Mail.

The fraudulent activities continued for almost three years from October 2016 to May 2019 with more than 22,000 claims.

The scam was simple enough. The brothers would post USPS Priority Mail packages and pay for $100 of insurance coverage for any potential loss or damage.

Brothers Anwer Fareed Alam, 35, and Yousofzay Fahim Alam, 31, pleaded guilty to defrauding the USPS of over $2.3 million through fraudulent insurance claims

The scam was simply enough: the brothers would post USPS Priority Mail packages and pay for $100 of insurance coverage for any potential loss or damage before making a false claim

The insurance claim checks were mailed to various addresses in Temecula, including 15 different post office boxes based at two different post offices in the area. Pictured, one of the two post offices in Temecula

They set up 15 PO Boxes split between Temecula’s two post office, one of which is seen above

But the contents of the packages were either empty or completely worthless – and Anwer Alam would send them to fictitious recipients addresses.

Yousofzay Alam would then submit fake insurance claims through the USPS website.

He would falsely assert how the packages contained items of greater value than their actual contents and then make up stories of the parcels either being lost or damaged during transit.

In an attempt to add to the authenticity of the claims Yousofzay Alam would then include fabricated invoices together with photos of goods that were not actually present in the packages.

The brothers would go further still by taking further measures to conceal their wrongdoing by using aliases and adopting fake business names, making it harder to  trace the multitude of fraudulent insurance claims they filed.

The case, investigated by the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General found that time the USPS received one of the brother’s claim forms, the postal service paid out compensation in order to cover the men’s alleged losses of up to $100 in value along with the original shipping costs.

Louis DeJoy, 67, is currently serving as the 75th U.S. postmaster general

The insurance claim checks were mailed to various addresses in Temecula, including the brothers’ home and business addresses, as well as around 15 different post office boxes based at two different post offices.

The brothers then paid their ill-gotten gains into their bank accounts.

In once example, from November 2018, the Alam brothers received a check for $106.59 from a Priority Mail.

The scam was so extensive the USPS paid out at least $2,367,033 from around 22,330 claims.

The brothers who are both free on bond will both be sentenced in November with each brother facing a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

The men have no documented prior felony convictions in the federal court system, according to records.

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