18 USC § 1709 - Theft of mail matter by officer or employee | Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure | U.S. Code

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Current through Pub. L. 112-283. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

Whoever, being a Postal Service officer or employee, embezzles any letter, postal card, package, bag, or mail, or any article or thing contained therein entrusted to him or which comes into his possession intended to be conveyed by mail, or carried or delivered by any carrier, messenger, agent, or other person employed in any department of the Postal Service, or forwarded through or delivered from any post office or station thereof established by authority of the Postmaster General or of the Postal Service; or steals, abstracts, or removes from any such letter, package, bag, or mail, any article or thing contained therein, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

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Whoever, being a Postal Service officer or employee, embezzles any letter, postal card, package, bag, or mail, or any article or thing contained therein entrusted to him or which comes into his possession intended to be conveyed by mail, or carried or delivered by any carrier, messenger, agent, or other person employed in any department of the Postal Service, or forwarded through or delivered from any post office or station thereof established by authority of the Postmaster General or of the Postal Service; or steals, abstracts, or removes from any such letter, package, bag, or mail, any article or thing contained therein, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

Source

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 780; Pub. L. 91–375, § 6(j)(19)(A),Aug. 12, 1970, 84 Stat. 778; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(I),Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)

Historical and Revision Notes

Based on title 18, U.S.C., 1940 ed., § 318 (Mar. 4, 1909, ch. 321, § 195,35 Stat. 1125).

The provisions of said section 318 of title 18, U.S.C., 1940 ed., were incorporated in this section and section 1703 of this title.

The fine of “$500” was increased to “$2,000” as more proportionate to the imprisonment provision and to conform with other comparable sections. (See sections 1702 and 1708 of this title.)

Changes were made in phraseology.

Amendments

1994—Pub. L. 103–322substituted “fined under this title” for “fined not more than $2,000”.

1970—Pub. L. 91–375substituted “officer” for “postmaster” in section catchline, and in text substituted “Postal Service officer or employee” for “postmaster or Postal Service employee” and “entrusted” for “intrusted” and inserted “or of the Postal Service” after “Postmaster General”.

Effective Date of 1970 Amendment

Amendment by Pub. L. 91–375effective within 1 year after Aug. 12, 1970, on date established therefor by Board of Governors of United States Postal Service and published by it in Federal Register, see section 15(a) ofPub. L. 91–375, set out as an Effective Date note preceding section 101 of Title 39, Postal Service.

The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for this section. Updates to a broader range of sections may be found at the update page for containing chapter, title, etc.

The most recent Classification Table update that we have noticed was Tuesday, April 16, 2013

An empty table indicates that we see no relevant changes listed in the classification tables. If you suspect that our system may be missing something, please double-check with the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.

How To Use

Multiple entries for a section are listed most recent first, within the section.

The Session Year indicates which session of Congress was responsible for the changes classified. The Congress number forms the first part of the Public Law number; each Congress has two sessions.

Abbreviations used in the Description of Change column:

An empty field implies a standard amendment.
"new" means a new section or new note, or all new text of an existing section or note.
"nt" means note.
"nt [tbl]" means note [table].
"prec" means preceding.
"fr" means a transfer from another section.
"to" means a transfer to another section.
"omitted" means the section is omitted.
"repealed" means the section is repealed.
"nt ed change" and "ed change" - See the Editorial Classification Change Table [pdf].

The Public Law field is linked to the development of the law in the Thomas system at the Library of Congress.

The Statutes at Large field is linked to the text of the law, in the context of its volume of the Statutes at Large, at the Government Printing Office. Please note that it takes a while for these pages to get posted, so for very recent legislation, you need to look at the "enrolled" version at the Thomas site.

The Statutes at Large references have been rendered in the format used as page numbers in the Public Law web pages to which we link, to facilitate copy-paste into browser "find on this (web) page" tools. We are still working on a more direct link facility.

For serious comparison work, we suggest copying all or a portion of the Public Law text into your favorite text editor, for convenient content traversal and window control.

Sections with change type "new" are a special case, still under development. All are now listed, at the title level only.

You will find that occassionally a specific update you notice in a Public Law listed in a classification table will already have made it into the Code. We assume this is an artifact of the LRC edit process. The LII does not edit the LRC content.

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General Reference

Refer to the LRC (Law Revision Council) for explanations about the US Code from the folks who put it all together.

You can look for information about what it is and is not, which titles are positive law, the schedule of Supplements, etc. Under download you can find the source data we use here (GPO locator files), as well as, PDF files that look just like the paper books (these may be rather large).

Refer to the Thomas site for changes that have not yet made it into the classification tables.

18 USC	Description of Change	Session Year	Public Law	Statutes at Large

This is a list of parts within the Code of Federal Regulations for which this US Code section provides rulemaking authority.

This list is taken from the Parallel Table of Authorities and Rules provided by GPO [Government Printing Office].

It is not guaranteed to be accurate or up-to-date, though we do refresh the database weekly. More limitations on accuracy are described at the GPO site.

39 CFR - Title 39—Postal Service

39 CFR Part 20 - INTERNATIONAL POSTAL SERVICE

18 USC § 1709 - Theft of mail matter by officer or employee

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