A former post office window clerk pleaded guilty to charges that he stole nearly $700,000 in stamps so that a buddy could sell them on e-Bay. Marvin Lamont Foster, of Rosedale, Md., went into federal court in Baltimore on Thursday and admitted that he stole stamps by hundreds and thousands from June 2008 until March of this year. He then handed the stamps over to his friend, Kyle Mathias, 23, of Joppa, who sold them on the online auction house. The scheme netted some $682,000, federal prosecutors say in court papers. Foster, 54, admitted that he stole “coils” — rolls of 100 stamps valued at $42 — and “bricks” — 2,000 stamps valued at $840 apiece — and handed them off to Mathias and others. He had been a window clerk at the Elkridge Post Office since at least 1998, but he was arrested after a December videotape showed him rifling through post office boxes and helping himself to thousands of stamps. It was one of several instances when Foster had been caught taking stamps since January 2007. After securing Foster’s plea, U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein issued a buyer beware warning to the public. “Anyone who buys stamps at a discount should be on notice of the risk that they are purchasing stolen property,” he said in a news release. Foster’s plea came as part of a deal with prosecutors, but terms of the agreement were not disclosed Thursday. He’ll be sentenced in November and faces up to five years in prison. Mathias is still awaiting trial.
