Juan Enrique Caudillo, 60, a former United States Postal Service employee got 100 months in federal prison for accepting bribes from business customers in exchange for falsely approving unpaid or underpaid bulk mail shipments, causing more than $11.7 million in total losses to his employer.  Caudillo also has to pay back $11,745,608.  Caudillo pleaded guilty in March 2019 to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

Caudillo, who retired from the U.S. Postal Service last year, also agreed to surrender his pension as restitution, as well as the full balance – approximately $140,000 – of his Thrift Savings Plan, a 401(k)-type account available to federal employees. 

Since at least 2012, Caudillo, while working as a bulk mail clerk at the Paramount post office, took bribes in exchange for approving unpaid or underpaid bulk mail shipments as fully paid. In one scheme, the owner of Premier Mailing, Inc., a Paramount-based company, paid Caudillo bribes in return for Caudillo falsely listing certain mailings as prepaid, resulting in no postage being paid for them. In a separate scheme, Caudillo accepted bribes to allow another business mailer to underreport information, resulting in reduced payment to the Postal Service for mailings. Caudillo will also forfeit about $700,000 in cash seized from his residence during a November 2018 search warrant. Caudillo also agreed to forfeit about $50,000 seized from his various bank accounts, and a Eureka, California residence that he purchased with the scheme's proceeds of the schemes. 

Two co-defendants, Ramon Arribeno, 61, of Hacienda Heights, and Armando Lopez-Torres, 63, of the El Sereno neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles, the owner and manager, respectively, of Premier Mailing, each pleaded guilty in 2019 to charges for their roles in the conspiracy and received federal prison sentences.