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Ravn Air Employees Accused Of Stealing Mail

Ravn Air's terminal in Bethel. Ravn employees at the Anchorage airport are accused of stealing mail bound for rural Alaskan communities.
Dean Swope/KYUK

Six former Ravn Air employees have now been arrested for stealing mail bound for the bush. According to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Anchorage, the thefts took place over a period of two years, starting in spring of 2015 and ending in spring of 2017. 

The former ramp employees are accused in a scheme that involved using a Ravn truck to take valuable items from the Anchorage airport post office to their own vehicles, rather than to Ravn’s planes. The items would then be sold. Among the valuables were tobacco, cigarettes, and electronics, including 343 computers.

The alleged thefts included computers bound for the school in Mountain Village, and also schools in Unalakleet and Stebbins.  

Mail bound for a number of other communities was stolen, including St. Mary’s, Emmonak, Kotlik, Aniak, Alakanuk, Grayling, Kalskag, Koyuk, and Stebbins.

Ravn issued a press release saying that when company officials learned of the scheme, they cooperated with authorities and fired the employees.

Perhaps the best known broadcasting voice in Alaska, Steve Heimel began his career at a radio station in rural Pennsylvania and worked his way up to two of the nation's Top Ten commercial media markets. He moved to public radio in 1974 for greater creative latitude and moved to Alaska in 1982, working for the statewide Alaska Public Radio Network for 32 years as Managing Editor, morning news announcer and host of the statewide “Talk of Alaska” call-in show.