A former Sprint employee managed to pocket more than $300,000 in customer rebate checks during a lucrative three-year scam, federal authorities charged Tuesday.
Heng Dong allegedly routed the checks to Post Office boxes that he opened in Queens and Virginia depositing the proceeds into his own account between 2007 and 2010, Brooklyn federal prosecutors said.
Sprint internal investigators began probing the case after a customer reported that a rebate check they were expecting never arrived.
Agents found that the check had been mailed out and cashed — but was improperly sent to a Queens P.O. box instead of to the owner’s address.
They later discovered that a total of 637 customer rebate checks had been sent to the mysterious address in College Point with a total value of $52,530.
The probe uncovered that the post office box owner, Heng Dong, had five additional boxes in Flushing, Bayside, Fresh Meadows and Richmond, Va. where a flood of checks were being sent.
Agents learned that Dong was a Sprint employee who had access to customer information that allowed him to activate and send out the checks to his addresses.
Dong — who now works in a restaurant — was released on $75,000 bond posted by his sister after pleading not guilty at his arraignment in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday.