Thousands of pieces of undelivered mail dating back to 1989 were discovered in the home of a postal worker who had recently passed away, authorities report.
When the postal worker, who had retired back in 1993, passed away this month, a horde of more than 3,500 pieces of undelivered mail was found on his property.
Most of the mail is so old that the addresses of recipients are no longer valid, and an additional amount was too damaged to deliver. Postal authorities reported that only 12 of the pieces of mail were still deliverable.
“That’s being delivered to those customers yesterday and today by the postmaster with a letter of apology,” U.S. Postal Service spokesperson David Walton said on Friday.
This isn’t the only time such a thing has happened. Late last year Brooklyn mailman Joseph Brucato hoarded and refused to deliver some 40,000 pieces of mail.
In another case, a postal worker in Ohio was caught throwing bags of mail in the garbage to get out of delivering it.
In yet another case, in 2008, 13,000 pieces of mail were left undelivered by a postal worker in California.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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