Mailman hid 45,000 letters in storage and late mother's house

Tampering with someone's mail is a serious crime, and police in Kentucky have arrested a man they say has been doing so for years. ABC says, "Police say over a two-year period, letter carrier Brent Morse dumped 45,000 letters and packages that were in storage instead of delivering them."

Morse has been a mailman for the past five years. According to police, he wanted to shorten his workday and decided to just ... not deliver some of the mail.

WGHP reports police Captain Craig Patterson says Morse "wanted to speed up his route. I think he was lazy."

But according to Daily Mail, Morse's lawyer says his client was going through a divorce at the time and was responsible for picking up his children after school, so he would just store any mail he didn't get delivered.

Alarmingly, mail carriers have been arrested for mail fraud before.

New York Post reported in March, a Long Island mailman was charged with throwing more than 1,000 pieces of mail into the trash.

A writer for Australia's The Age says a postal worker for the Australian Post hid about 10,000 undelivered packages and letters in his bedroom in 2013.

The federal penalty for mail tampering in the U.S. is a maximum of five years in jail.

But The Courier-Journal says Morse was only sentenced to six months in jail and then six months on home detention because only a few of the 250+ mail recipients on his route suffered financially from not receiving their mail. Morse also never stole anything from the mail he hoarded in both a storage shed and his late mother's home.

WPSD says "He will also have to pay almost $15,000 in restitution to residents, a bank and two other businesses for their losses."

All the mail Morse had stashed has now been delivered.