Probation, fine for ex-postal worker
Sting nabs man who opened fake letter to Playboy
Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News
Published February 25, 2006 at midnight
Edward Cramer is unlikely to open other people's mail ever again.
Especially if it's addressed to "Playboy Girl Next Door Contest" and marked "Photos, Do Not Bend."
A federal judge on Friday sentenced Cramer, 58, to a year's probation and ordered him to pay a $500 fine for opening that letter on Feb. 15, 2005, while working at a post office at 8700 East Jefferson Way in Denver.
"Your honor, I'd like to first tell the court how deeply sorry I am for anything like this happening," Cramer told Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn.
He said he was "deeply humiliated" and that, because he immediately resigned his job, he had suffered economically and missed his social life with his former co-workers.
"This is terrible for me and I'm so sorry," Cramer said. "My life's been turned upside down."
Postal authorities had spotted Cramer a day earlier, emerging from a restroom and taping closed a letter that had just been mailed by a pretty young woman.
It was addressed to a "Hometown Hotties" contest in New York. Inside were glamour photographs, none involving undress.
The next day, U.S. postal inspectors got the same young woman to cooperate by returning to the post office to mail a second letter - a phony one - addressed to the Playboy contest.
Inside it was a tiny transmitter that, when the letter was opened, sounded an alarm on a receiver watched by a postal inspector who was waiting out of sight.
Cramer originally was charged with a federal felony punishable by up to five years in prison, but, because he did not steal anything from the mail, was allowed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of unlawfully opening mail.
"It is extremely important to us to deter this conduct so people have confidence when they drop their mortgage payment in the mail or a picture that they want to get somewhere," prosecutor Jim Allison said.
"Good mail is good government."
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