Ex-postmaster gets halfway house, probation for fraud

ST. LOUIS -- A former eastern Missouri postmaster was sentenced Friday to six months in a halfway house and ordered to repay $88,000 to the U.S. Postal Service and a postmasters group she defrauded.

U.S. District Judge Jean Hamilton also ordered Tina Emery, 47, of St. Charles, to spend five years on probation.

In pleading guilty Aug. 30 to two felony fraud counts, Emery admitted she embezzled postal money orders valued at $3,742 in December 1998 while she was postmaster in Hawk Point, Mo. She also admitted in court papers that she defrauded the Postal Service and the National Association of Postmasters of the United States of up to $40,000.

Emery served in management capacities at post offices in Hawk Point, Defiance, Bellflower, Middletown and New Madrid. From 1997 through 2000, she issued 232 postal money orders to be paid out for her benefit without paying for them, according to an 18-count indictment returned against her in June.

The indictment also alleged that while serving as secretary/treasurer of the NAPUS' Missouri chapter from 1998 through October 2000, Emery defrauded the organization of $34,000. She since has admitted using the NAPUS credit card for personal expenditures and wrote checks on the NAPUS account.

U.S. Attorney Ray Gruender has said Emery used the credit card to buy, among other things, items at an outlet mall and airline tickets for a trip to Las Vegas.