A brazen thief was finally busted months after he was caught on video raiding a US Postal Service mail storage box in Brooklyn, authorities said Friday.
Ebrahima Bah, 20, was allegedly filmed grabbing two white garbage bags stuffed with mail from a USPS relay box at Kingston Avenue and Carroll Street in Crown Heights around 12:20 p.m. Nov. 4, officials and prosecutors said.
He then took off in a white sedan with New Jersey plates, driven by an accomplice, according to the video, taken by a witness and released by Jewish neighborhood watch group Crown Heights Shomrim.
Bah allegedly used a key to easily access the federal box, court documents said.
Mail thieves are known to steal keys from post carriers, sometimes at gunpoint, or buy them from crooked employees, sources said.
Thieves often steal credit cards or checks – which can be washed o as to rewrite the dollar amount – from pilfered mail stashes, according to the sources.
Bah was arrested for the shameless heist on March 28, and faces charges of possession of burglars tools, petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, the criminal complaint said.
It appears he was connected to the theft after an unrelated arrest a day earlier, for allegedly driving a Mercedes Benz with missing license plates, a tinted windshield and a suspended license on Regent Place in Flatbush, according to court docs.
Bah was released on his own recognizance in both cases, as the charges were not bail-eligible, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said.
Such mail heists are a national problem, but in the Big Apple, Brooklyn and Queens are the biggest targets, sources said.
“With the public’s help, New York Division postal inspectors were able to send a firm message to others that crimes against the U.S. Mail will never be tolerated,” Postal Inspection Service Acting Inspector in Charge Ed Gallashaw said in a statement.
“We also thank the NYPD in our continued mission to stop mail theft and related financial crimes that endanger our nation’s mail system and our communities.”
