Mail processing on a U.S. Postal Service delivery bar code sorter. (USPS)
Two men have admitted paying $1.8 million in kickbacks to local U.S. Postal Service employees in exchange for lucrative trucking contracts at USPS’s Denver distribution center.
Sam and Jay Yoon will be sentenced in the coming months to as many as five years in a federal prison on one count each of conspiracy to commit honest services mail fraud.
The case against the Yoons, which was filed in Dallas in September and first reported by the news site Court Watch, shows how four people were able to steer more than $15 million in taxpayer dollars to themselves and their companies while avoiding detection.
In 2015, Sam Yoon, now 50, was living in Denver and working for Assured Trucking in Aurora when he decided to place his first bribe, according to his plea agreement. That fall, he and Assured’s owner — Min Oh, according to records — met with a senior network operations analyst for USPS.
Their arrangement was simple, Yoon recalls: Assured would receive a $134,000 contract to move mail during the hectic holiday season and the USPS analyst, who has not been named, would receive $2,500. The dollar figures would grow from there.
In summer 2017, the USPS analyst proposed another kickback scheme. This time, Assured was paid $1.8 million and it kicked back $50,000, according to Yoon.
Yoon said in his plea agreement that kickbacks were discussed in the meeting that Assured’s owner attended, and that Yoon kept Oh informed of the payments.
Oh has not been charged. Nick Kim, a manager at Assured Trucking, told BusinessDen on Wednesday that Oh denies involvement in Yoon’s crime. Kim said that Yoon, a founding partner at Assured, approached Oh about the bribery opportunity but was rebuffed.
“The owner declined the deal and Sam threatened to leave,” Kim said of Oh, who lives in Aurora. “After following through and leaving, he started his own company. We didn’t hear anything about him until we were being questioned for the investigation.”
By November 2018, Yoon had formed the trucking company Postal Box Inc. in Castle Rock. His contact at the USPS had branched out as well and was now conspiring with a USPS coworker. Together, they would ensure that Yoon won his largest trucking contract to date.
Postal Box was paid $12.2 million between 2019 and 2021 to provide shipping for the USPS distribution center in northeast Denver, which is one of the country’s largest. That netted the USPS analyst $1.2 million and the other USPS employee $5,000, Sam Yoon said.
Meanwhile, in June 2020, Jay Yoon met with both USPS employees at a Denver restaurant, the name of which is not revealed in court documents. There, the trio decided that Jay Yoon, now 46, would start a trucking business and apply to provide shipping for the Denver distribution center during the 2020 holiday season, according to Jay Yoon’s plea agreement.
The newly formed company JY Logistics was paid $1.6 million by taxpayers in 2021 and Yoon paid $295,000 each to his two co-conspirators at the Postal Service, he admits now.
When asked if the Postal Service employees in question have been terminated, a spokesman said, “USPS does not comment on personnel actions or ongoing investigations.”
Court Watch identifies Sam and Jay Yoon as brothers, though court documents do not. Lawyers for the two declined to discuss their clients’ case with BusinessDen but a lawyer for Jay Yoon told Court Watch that he has “readily accepted responsibility for his part in this crime and plans to make amends to the government. He is remorseful for his part in the scheme.”
“Mr. Yoon recognizes that what he did was wrong,” the lawyer’s statement said, “and if given the opportunity to do things differently, he would make a very different choice.”
Mail processing on a U.S. Postal Service delivery bar code sorter. (USPS)
Two men have admitted paying $1.8 million in kickbacks to local U.S. Postal Service employees in exchange for lucrative trucking contracts at USPS’s Denver distribution center.
Sam and Jay Yoon will be sentenced in the coming months to as many as five years in a federal prison on one count each of conspiracy to commit honest services mail fraud.
The case against the Yoons, which was filed in Dallas in September and first reported by the news site Court Watch, shows how four people were able to steer more than $15 million in taxpayer dollars to themselves and their companies while avoiding detection.
In 2015, Sam Yoon, now 50, was living in Denver and working for Assured Trucking in Aurora when he decided to place his first bribe, according to his plea agreement. That fall, he and Assured’s owner — Min Oh, according to records — met with a senior network operations analyst for USPS.
Their arrangement was simple, Yoon recalls: Assured would receive a $134,000 contract to move mail during the hectic holiday season and the USPS analyst, who has not been named, would receive $2,500. The dollar figures would grow from there.
In summer 2017, the USPS analyst proposed another kickback scheme. This time, Assured was paid $1.8 million and it kicked back $50,000, according to Yoon.
Yoon said in his plea agreement that kickbacks were discussed in the meeting that Assured’s owner attended, and that Yoon kept Oh informed of the payments.
Oh has not been charged. Nick Kim, a manager at Assured Trucking, told BusinessDen on Wednesday that Oh denies involvement in Yoon’s crime. Kim said that Yoon, a founding partner at Assured, approached Oh about the bribery opportunity but was rebuffed.
“The owner declined the deal and Sam threatened to leave,” Kim said of Oh, who lives in Aurora. “After following through and leaving, he started his own company. We didn’t hear anything about him until we were being questioned for the investigation.”
By November 2018, Yoon had formed the trucking company Postal Box Inc. in Castle Rock. His contact at the USPS had branched out as well and was now conspiring with a USPS coworker. Together, they would ensure that Yoon won his largest trucking contract to date.
Postal Box was paid $12.2 million between 2019 and 2021 to provide shipping for the USPS distribution center in northeast Denver, which is one of the country’s largest. That netted the USPS analyst $1.2 million and the other USPS employee $5,000, Sam Yoon said.
Meanwhile, in June 2020, Jay Yoon met with both USPS employees at a Denver restaurant, the name of which is not revealed in court documents. There, the trio decided that Jay Yoon, now 46, would start a trucking business and apply to provide shipping for the Denver distribution center during the 2020 holiday season, according to Jay Yoon’s plea agreement.
The newly formed company JY Logistics was paid $1.6 million by taxpayers in 2021 and Yoon paid $295,000 each to his two co-conspirators at the Postal Service, he admits now.
When asked if the Postal Service employees in question have been terminated, a spokesman said, “USPS does not comment on personnel actions or ongoing investigations.”
Court Watch identifies Sam and Jay Yoon as brothers, though court documents do not. Lawyers for the two declined to discuss their clients’ case with BusinessDen but a lawyer for Jay Yoon told Court Watch that he has “readily accepted responsibility for his part in this crime and plans to make amends to the government. He is remorseful for his part in the scheme.”
“Mr. Yoon recognizes that what he did was wrong,” the lawyer’s statement said, “and if given the opportunity to do things differently, he would make a very different choice.”
