Barrington Man Charged In $16 Million Postal Fraud

CHICAGO — Three men in the bulk mailing business conspired to pocket at least $16 million dollars by faking paperwork to make the post office deliver more than 80 million pieces of mail for free, according to federal prosecutors. The trio includes a direct mail broker and two owners of a company that assembled bulk mailings for clients over a period of nearly five years. They are accused of forging the signatures of postal employees and secretly using an official stamp to carry out the scheme, according to charges filed Monday by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago.

David Gargano, 51, of Barrington, operated Direct Mail Resources, which collected a fee for matching customers looking for businesses to carry out bulk mailing services. Co-defendants Yogesh Patel, 58, of Orlando, Florida, and Arvind Lakkamsani, 57, of Northbrook, ran Prodigy Mailing Services, a bulk mailing company originally based in Bolingbrook before it moved to Woodridge.

The charges allege Patel was Prodigy's president and primary shareholder, while Lakkamsani was the project manager. Meanwhile, Gargano allegedly referred two energy companies to Prodigy, and they ended up providing millions of dollars purportedly for postage payments.

As part of the plot, Gargano allegedly created a company called Postmaster, Inc. and opened a bank account using its name to make it seem like postage was getting paid.

But in reality, according to prosecutors, the men had arranged to split up the money clients thought they were paying for postage. Half allegedly went to Gargano and half to Patel and Lakkamsani "for their own benefit and the benefit of their families and businesses," according to the charges.

In order to fool the postal service, the men had to fake official verification forms for bulk mailings. Prodigy allegedly used an official U.S. Postal Service timestamp that Patel and Lakkamsani could access with unauthorized keys they kept to a secure area for on-site payment of postal services. Because the post office requires verification forms to be signed by a postal service employee, the men also forged the signature of the clerk who worked at their facility.

When deliveries were sent out later than promised, the men sometimes created fake receipts to make it look like the mailings had been sent out on time, and other times failed to mail them at all, the charges allege. All three men have been charged with one count mail fraud. They face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted.