Two New York City-area men were charged by a federal grand jury in Portland on Wednesday with burglarizing two Maine post offices and robbing two postal carriers at knife point.
Lance Funderburk, 30, of Brooklyn, New York, and Winston McLeod, 30, of Orange, New Jersey, were each charged with two robberies, two burglaries, and participating in an overall conspiracy.
According to the indictment and an affidavit from a postal inspector, McLeod and Funderburk broke into the Paris post office on Jan. 14 and the North Monmouth post office on Jan. 16, allegedly stealing postal equipment, including a money order printer, and mail from both locations.
On Jan. 20, the men allegedly confronted a postal carrier at 20 Davis St., a residence in Lewiston, and, while wearing ski masks and armed with knives, threatened to kill her unless she handed over her postal key.
On the same day, they made the same threat to another postal carrier at 480 Main St., a dentist’s office.
Investigators found two iPhones in the snow outside the window of the Paris Post Office, according to the postal inspector. One of them had McLeod’s photo on the lock screen.
Later in the day on Jan. 20, Rumford police pulled over a car driven by Funderburk with McLeod as a passenger. McLeod was arrested at the time on an active warrant. Funderburk was not, but police told him to come pick up McLeod at the police station. Instead, a third person arrived at the station to pick up McLeod and told police he was alone, but police found Funderburk lying on the floorboard of the man’s parked car, the postal inspector said.
Police detained Funderburk and found the postal keys but left the keys on a desk in the room whereupon Funderburk is believed to have pushed the keys into his rectum “to prevent the key
from being obtained,” the postal inspector said, adding that the keys were recovered from Funderburk “during the intake search of his person” at the Strafford County Jail in New Hampshire.
If convicted, the men face up to 25 years in prison on each of the two robbery counts, up to five years on each of the two burglary counts, and up to five years on the conspiracy count. They would also face up to five years of supervised release after any prison term and a fine of up to $250,000 on each count of conviction.