AUGUSTA — An Augusta man previously convicted of robbery faces federal charges for allegedly stealing business checks from mailboxes, altering the payee, and cashing them for thousands of dollars at banks in Maine and Massachusetts.

Ryan Robert Pomerleau, 31, is charged with theft of mail, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Pomerleau was arrested Monday in New Hampshire, and appeared Tuesday before Magistrate Justice John H. Rich III, who ordered him held pending another hearing 10 a.m. next Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Portland. Attorney David R. Beneman was appointed to represent Pomerleau.

According to an affidavit by U.S. Postal Inspector Michael Desrosiers, the investigation began when Augusta police arrested another man, William K. Seabron, on burglary charges in July and recovered mail he had discarded in a Dumpster at an Augusta motel. Desrosiers’ affidavit says the mail recovered when Seabron was arrested was addressed to “multiple different businesses located at 60 Industrial Drive, Augusta.”

Seabron told police Pomerleau had used a typewriter to alter several checks mailed from businesses to make Seabron the payee and drove him to several banks in Augusta, where the checks were cashed successfully.

Seabron also said Pomerleau invited him to go “mail diving” to steal mail from post office collection boxes in Massachusetts, according to the affidavit.

Seabron was indicted in August on charges of robbery, misuse of identification, theft by unauthorized taking and two counts of trafficking of scheduled drugs – marijuana and buprenorphine.

The federal one-count complaint against Pomerleau says he stole a letter addressed to a Kittery hardware store that had been left in a U.S. Postal Service collection box in Kittery on Aug. 9. While the original check was written for $83.77, it was cashed by Pomerleau in Portland for $700, Derosiers’ affidavit says.

Betty Adams can be contacted at 621-5631 or at:

badams@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @betadams

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