A federal grand jury has indicted five people, including three current or former U.S. Postal Service mail carriers, in connection with a scheme prosecutors say involved the theft and resale of nearly $24 million in checks stolen from the mail.
The man identified as the operation’s leader, Tryston Tremaine Vaughn, 28, is also currently free on bond in a separate Fort Bend County murder case.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, the indictment accuses Vaughn of recruiting USPS mail carriers to pull checks out of the mail along their delivery routes. Vaughn and others allegedly bought the stolen checks from those carriers and resold them to buyers through a Telegram channel called “SlipsandChips,” then shipped the checks out using FedEx. Prosecutors say the scheme ran from 2022 through the time of the indictment and involved roughly $24 million in stolen checks.
Court records show Vaughn’s murder case predates the federal charges by more than a year.
Stafford Police arrested him last March after a fatal shooting in a motel parking lot off the Southwest Freeway. According to police, surveillance video shows Vaughn firing on a moving vehicle while looking for someone he believed had stolen a $92,000 necklace. The shots missed their intended target and instead killed 22-year-old Kerry Thomas, whom police described as a bystander. Thomas’ family had relocated to the Houston area from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, according to his online obituary.
Vaughn posted a $600,000 bond last May and was released from custody, records show. He also faces a theft of a firearm charge that the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office says has not been formally filed and will be handled alongside the murder case. A spokesman for that office said the murder charge and the federal mail case “are not related” but confirmed the office has been coordinating with federal authorities so the two investigations do not interfere with each other.
Four of the five people named in the federal indictment have been taken into custody. Along with Vaughn, they are Catherine Clauzelle Kilpatrick, a postal worker who pleaded not guilty this week and is expected to be released on an unsecured $50,000 bond; Malcolm Tiree Joubert, also a postal worker; and Alyssa Nadine Bryant, accused of helping facilitate the sale and shipment of stolen checks through FedEx. A fifth defendant, postal worker Drakkor Jamar Alexander, had not been arrested as of Monday evening.
If convicted, each defendant faces up to 30 years in federal prison and a possible $1 million fine on the conspiracy to commit bank fraud charge. Kilpatrick, Joubert, and Alexander, the three postal workers, also face up to five years and a possible $250,000 fine for theft by a postal employee.
The USPS Office of Inspector General, which investigates fraud inside the Postal Service, said in a statement that internal mail theft prevention is a core part of its mission and that it is seeing a growing number of cases where outside criminal groups target and recruit postal employees to help steal checks and other valuables. The office pointed the public to its hotline at uspsoig.gov for reporting suspected wrongdoing by postal employees.
Vaughn’s case adds to an ongoing debate in Texas over defendants accused of violent crimes being released on bond before trial.
Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment last November, Proposition 3, allowing judges to deny bail to people accused of certain violent felonies, including murder, when prosecutors can show by clear and convincing evidence that release would endanger the public. That amendment took effect for offenses committed on or after November 19, 2025, meaning it would not have applied retroactively to a case like Vaughn’s, where the shooting occurred in March 2025 and bond was posted that May.
