Sign up for our PoliticsNY newsletter for the latest coverage and to stay informed about the 2021 elections in your district and across NYC
A former Queens postal worker was arrested after she allegedly stole a credit card from her mail route and used it to pay for plastic surgery, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced on Thursday.
Shakera Small, a 31-year-old woman from Jamaica, was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on Wednesday, March 24, for allegedly using a credit card cribbed from her United States Postal Service mail route to fund an $8,000 trip to a Long Island plastic surgeon in September 2019, the DA said. Small faces a host of charges including grand larceny, forgery and identity theft.
If convicted, Small faces up to seven years in prison.
Between August and September 2019, Small was assigned to deliver mail to homes on 168th Street in Jamaica, only a few blocks from her own home, according to the charges.
During that time, a man who lived on the route got a credit card statement, which detailed an $8,000 charge to Long Island Plastic Surgery, Katz said. Calling the bank, the man explained the charge was fraudulent and that he hadn’t even received the credit card for which the charges were applied, according to the criminal complaint.
An investigation into the fraudulent charge later allegedly found that Small had used a fake name and driver’s license at the Babylon-based medical office in August 2019, where she used her legitimate credit card to put down a $1,000 deposit on the surgery, Katz said.
However, later that month, when she paid the full balance, Small used the stolen credit card, according to the charges.
Small underwent surgery on Sept. 3, 2019.
“Credit card fraud is a serious crime. Bogus charges can ruin a person’s credit rating and affect one’s ability to buy a home, a car or even rent an apartment,” Katz said. “The crime alleged here was a betrayal of the public trust and an insult to the thousands and thousands of hardworking postal employees who do their jobs with integrity.”
Judge Toko Serita ordered Small return to court on May 6.
