Residents of Eastpointe and Rochester Hills are among four people accused by federal authorities of operating a $63-million scheme to steal checks from people’s mail and sell them.

Jaiswan Williams, 31, of Rochester Hills; Dequan Foreman, 30, of Eastpointe; Vanessa Hargrove, 39, of Detroit; and Crystal Jenkins, 31, of Detroit, have been charged with conspiracy to aid and abet bank and wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon announced Friday.

The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.

Hargrove and Jenkins were Postal Service employees who “diverted and ultimately stole checks and other negotiable instruments from the mail, including a high volume of tax refund checks issued by the U.S. Treasury,” officials said in a news release. Williams and Foreman administered online marketplaces on which they sold the checks, officials said.

“When public employees break the public trust, they enrich themselves at the expense of the American taxpayer and undermine the institution itself,” Gorgon said in the release. “We will find and prosecute those who exploit their position for personal gain. We are committed to disrupting these shadowy schemes.”

According to allegations submitted by federal investigators, Hargrove and Jenkins sold the stolen checks to Williams and Foreman, who marketed them for sale on Telegram Messenger, a cloud-based, cross-platform instant messaging application. Prices varied based on the face-value of the checks. One of the Telegram channels, named “Whole Foods Slipsss,” was used to advertise high-dollar checks while another channel, “Uber Eats Slips,” was used to advertise lower-dollar checks. “Slips” is a term commonly used in these schemes to refer to stolen checks.

Transactions were completed via other methods using a variety of electronic payment systems. Purchasers of these checks would then attempt to fraudulently cash them using a variety of methods.

According to a report in Reuters news service and other media outlets Thursday, Vietnam authorities have instructed telecommunication service providers to block Telegram for not cooperating in combating alleged crimes committed by its users. Unrelated to the alleged stolen-check scheme, 55 men were arrested in France this week as part of an operation to dismantle a suspected pedophile ring that allegedly operated over Telegram, following a 10-month investigation, according to multiple media reports. Telegram was founded in 2013 by two Russian brothers and is headquarted in Dubai, United Emerites.

Regarding the charges against the foursome, Sean McStravick, acting inspector in charge of the Postal Inspection Service’s Detroit Division, thanked investigative partners for helping to “maintain the integrity and respectability of the U.S. Postal Service.”

“The charges against these four individuals underscore the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s commitment to securing the nation’s mail system from those who seek to exploit it for personal and financial gain,” McStravick added in the release. “Postal Inspectors utilize every tool at their disposal, including crucial partnerships, to uncover, investigate, and prosecute these schemes to the fullest extent of the law.”

Williams also faces charges on allegations of money laundering for activities dating back to October 2022, and for millions of dollars of fraudulent COVID-19 pandemic unemployment insurance benefit claims submitted between August and December 2020.

The investigation was led by the  U.S. Postal Service Office of the Inspector General with assistant from the Postal Inspection Service, participating investigative agencies included the  Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigations, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and Department of Labor Office of the Inspector General.

The case is being prosecuted by assistant U.S. attorneys Ryan A. Particka and Darrin Crawford.

The founder of Auto Workers for Trump 2024 in Macomb County thanked President Trump and predicted auto plants will reopen over the next few years during a brief speech at the president’s “Liberation Day” at the White House.

Brian Pannebecker attended the event Wednesday in the Rose Garden along with many top federal officials and 20 Michigan UAW members. Pannebecker cited the group of auto workers, who responded with cheers, during his remarks after Trump invited him to the podium on stage.

“We support Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs 100%,” Pannebecker said, pointing to the group, which included Chris Vitale of St. Clair Shores. “In six months or a year, we’re going to begin seeing the benefits. I can’t wait to see what’s happening three-four years down the road.”

In asking him to come on stage, Trump said, “He’s been a fan of ours and he understands this business a lot better than the economists, a lot better than anybody.”

Pannebecker started his comments by noting he is from “north of Detroit, Macomb County, the home of the Reagan Democrats.”

“My first vote for president was for Ronald Reagan,” he said. “I thought that was going to be the best president ever in my lifetime. That was until Donald J. Trump came along.”

He described metro Detroit as a region of closed and idle auto plants.

“My entire life I have watched plant after plant after plant in Detroit and the Metro Detroit area close,” Pannebecke said. “There are now plants sitting idle, there are now plants under-utilized. Donald Trump’s policies are going to bring product back into these under-utilized plants. There’s going to be new investment, new plants built.”

After he left the stage, Trump said of Pannebecker, “He got it right from the beginning; he got it before almost anyone else, and they (referencing the auto union members in the audience) did, too.”

“You’re going to be happy very soon,” the president assured.

Pannebecker, a New Baltimore resident and Sterling Heights native, is a retired auto worker who spoke at a Trump rally last November and has organized many pro-Trump events in recent years.

Vitale is a St. Clair Shores city councilman and recently recent Stellantis employee who was one of the 20 UAW members invited to attend the ceremony

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Vitale said before the event Wednesday morning from Washington D.C.. “They were looking for some autoworkers to show support, and I was picked to be one of them.”

Vitale said he is a strong supporter of Trump’s plans to heighten tariffs and has campaigned for them in the past. Like Pannebecker, he said he believes in the long run they will benefit the United States.

“My feeling is that the rest of the world is in a panic over these because they’ve been doing them to us for the past 60 years,” he said. “I would say in a year from now a lot of them probably won’t even be in place because the idea is to get those foreign governments to take down their tariffs on American products, level the playing field, so to speak, which is something I’ve been advocating for since 2008. Not looking for special treatment, just looking for equal treatment.”

He called the part of the negative reaction to tariffs “hair lighting on fire … nothing more than drama” because most products from Canada and Mexico initially will be exempt as part of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement. He called those reactions “scare stories.”

He said the explanation to support the tariffs is complex.

“What Trump is doing is fundamentally the right move,” he said.

Vitale paid for his trip, he said.

Vitale, who said he remains a member of the UAW, said he tested prototype drivetrains the last 10 years of his career at the Tech Center in Auburn Hills, and prior to that worked at other facilities for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Chrysler.

He was elected to City Council in November 2011 and was last re-elected in November 2023.

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