POSTAL SERVICE REGULATIONS TARGET THEFT, CONSUMER FRAUD
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Postal authorities are trying to curtail theft and consumer fraud with new regulations affecting private businesses that accept mail for others.Beginning April 24, customers who want to rent a private mailbox from commercial businesses must show a photo identification and verify they live or conduct business at the address listed on their application.
These customers also will be required to write their "PMB," or private mail box, number on the second line of their mailing address, similar to the way people with post office boxes are identified with a "P.O. Box" number. The U.S. Postal Service will hold mail without a PMB number.
Postal authorities said the changes target people who rent private mailboxes to shield illegal activities, such as credit card fraud and narcotics trafficking. Such mailboxes also are used as covers for mail-order fraud, child pornography rings and schemes to swindle the elderly.
WHITEWATER FIGURE IS GUILTY, BUT HE WON'T DO MUCH TIME
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- There's more prison time in store for Whitewater figure David Hale, but not much.
A Pulaski County jury on Thursday convicted Hale of lying to regulators about the solvency of his burial insurance company and sentenced him to 21 days in prison. He could serve as little as 3 1/2 days with good behavior.
Sentencing was set for April 5. He had faced up to eight years in jail.
Hale was convicted of putting $150,000 into the bank account of the National Savings Life Insurance Co. to show it was financially stable, then withdrawing the money days later and lying about it still later.
Defense lawyers said the infraction was a technicality and that no one lost money as a result.
Hale pleaded guilty in the Whitewater case to two felonies and served 21 months of a 28-month sentence. He was a key witness against then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and James and Susan McDougal at their 1996 fraud trial. All three were convicted.
FLORIDA WILDLIFE OFFICIALS USE DEER DNA TO CATCH POACHER
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Florida wildlife officials for the first time have used deer DNA to catch a poacher.
Lynn York, 38, pleaded guilty Wednesday to illegally possessing meat from two whitetail does. The meat was found in his pickup truck Dec. 21 at a wildlife area where the taking of female deer is illegal.
York had claimed the meat came from a buck. But researchers at the University of Florida analyzed DNA from the meat to determine the species, sex and geographic location of the deer.
It was the first time genetic analysis was used to convict a poacher in Florida, said Maj. Jim Ries of the state Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.
York was fined $1,661 and his hunting license suspended for three years.
WOMAN ACCUSED OF MAILING CYANIDE DIES OF CANCER AT 50
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A woman accused of mailing cyanide packets disguised as nutritional supplements to people around the country last summer has died at a federal medical facility in Texas.
Kathryn Schoonover, 50, died Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
She had been found to be terminally ill with cancer after her arrest in California and was sent to the medical center on Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas.
In September, doctors said she had only six months to live.
The Schoonover case sent a scare across the nation last August when she was arrested outside the post office in Marina del Rey, where she had allegedly stuffed cyanide packets attached to health supplement brochures into 100 envelopes.
A witness said Schoonover was wearing rubber gloves, holding a container marked with a skull and crossbones and scooping a substance from the container into envelopes.
In a van where Schoonover was living, authorities found two "hit lists," postal inspectors said.
There have been no known deaths from cyanide mailings.