Postal worker lied about jury duty to goof off

WASHINGTON — Neither wind nor rain nor even ice storms kept Joseph Winstead from doing his job as a mail processor for the U.S. Postal Service in Washington. But pretending he was serving on a jury did.

Winstead spent 144 days goofing off from his work at a mail-processing plant by telling his boss that jury service prevented him from sorting the mail. Over the course of Winstead's hoax, from fall 2003 to fall 2004, court papers show, the D.C. resident collected $31,000 in pay from the U.S. government that he didn't earn.

Wednesday, Winstead, 52, pleaded guilty to this fraud in the same federal courthouse where he had pretended to be spending so much time on civic duty. The ruse began in October 2003, when Winstead was chosen for a jury.

He listened to months of evidence in a trial of an alleged drug gang. But there were days the court was in recess and the jury did not meet — and Winstead never reported to the Postal Service, which was picking up his salary.

Winstead didn't stay on the jury long enough to render a verdict, getting excused just before deliberations started in April 2004. Even though he no longer was going to court, Winstead continued for months to pretend he was serving on that jury, drawing his federal salary, prosecutors said.

He might have gotten away with it, court papers show, if he hadn't repeated the scam.

In April 2006, Winstead got another summons and once again wound up on a federal jury at the courthouse in Washington. This time, he submitted paperwork to his bosses showing he had been serving for 40 days when he worked a fraction of that time.

A supervisor grew suspicious in 2006 and alerted investigators, said U.S. Postal Service spokesman Gerald McKiernan. He said he could not determine what supervisors thought of Winstead's claims in 2003 and 2004.

"We're glad the fraud was detected," McKiernan said. "The system worked."

The investigation led to Winstead's indictment in December and his guilty plea. Winstead confessed that he fabricated courthouse paperwork and sent it to his supervisor. Besides taking responsibility for the first scam, he admitted that in 2006 he got $7,000 in pay that he didn't deserve.

As part of his plea agreement, Winstead will most likely lose his freedom for eight to 14 months. He probably will have to serve at least half of his sentence in prison, according to sentencing guidelines. Winstead also agreed to repay the Postal Service $38,923.95.

It remains unclear how Winstead got away with his scam the first time around in 2003 and 2004.