Penn Police nab mail theft suspect

Police have arrested a University employee in connection with several incidents of mail theft in the Quadrangle last month.

The suspect, 24-year-old Lakia Lomax of the 2600 block of South 61st Street was allegedly opening greeting cards addressed to students, removing cash and then discarding the envelopes.

According to University Police Detective Anthony Richio, the alleged thefts were reported to police after other University employees found these discarded envelopes, along with several checks, in the mailroom trash can. Police then ran background checks on mailroom employees and arrested Lomax on a warrant already out against her for aggravated assault.

Once Lomax was arrested, Richio said, police "looked in her bag and found 11 pieces of mail that were addressed to various students in the Quad."

Richio estimated that about 100 pieces of mail were stolen. Lomax has confessed to taking some, but not all, of the missing mail.

"I didn't believe it," Richio said of Lomax's partial confession. "There were some inconsistencies in her story."

Richio said that Lomax allegedly intercepted the greeting cards in the mailroom and removed them from the premises. Then, a few days later, she threw the opened envelopes out in the very same place from which they were taken.

"My opinion, if I would've taken it, I would've put it in a trash can far, far away from here, [but the alleged thief] put the mail right where [she] worked," Richio said.

None of the cash reportedly taken from the Quad mailroom has been recovered, but all of the discarded checks were found and returned.

The case has now been turned over to Federal Postal Inspector Phil Recchilongo, who declined to comment since the alleged thefts are still under investigation.

The thefts came just a few weeks before Datrose, Inc., a private mail services firm, took over Penn's residential mail delivery on Jan. 4. The University signed a three-year contract to outsource mail delivery to Datrose last November.

The outsourcing follows years of student complaints regarding stolen mail, and University officials hope Datrose will be able to stop the problem.

"The good news of it is that we recognized the problem, we were addressing it," Housing and Conference Services Director Doug Berger said. "We got rid of the system... and we hope in doing that we got rid of the problem."

Although Datrose has taken over residential delivery from Penn Mail, the company has elected to retain many of the University's mailroom employees. According to Housing and Conference Services Marketing Manager Lynn Rotoli, all Penn Mail employees were guaranteed interviews with Datrose, and the firm chose to keep on three of four residential mail supervisors, as well as several other workers.

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