Crime

Chelsea man sentenced for stealing mail, fraudulently depositing checks

The man was one of nine members of the “Mission Hill Gang” involved in the scheme and charged in 2024, prosecutors said.

April 12, 2026 | 9:22 AM

1 minute to read

A Chelsea man was sentenced in federal court Friday for his role in a scheme to fraudulently deposit checks he stole from the mail, according to prosecutors.

Josman Romero-Delgado, 24, pleaded guilty in November 2025 to charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to steal and possess stolen mail, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement.

On Friday, Romero-Delgado was sentenced to time served of about four months, along with three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $39,157 in restitution, prosecutors said.

Between June 2023 and February 2024, officials said Romero-Delgado and eight co-conspirators stole checks from USPS collection boxes, used chemicals to wash away the hand-written ink, and rewrote them as payable to themselves or other bank accounts that they controlled. They then fraudulently deposited the checks and withdrew the money from ATMs or via money orders, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The nine men were known to prosecutors as the “Mission Hill Gang,” and they were charged in August 2024, according to a statement. The U.S. Attorney’s office referred to the efforts to apprehend them as one of several “multi-year investigations into gang violence in Boston.”

Investigators found that Romero-Delgado had opened accounts with Eastern Bank and TD Bank to deposit the fraudulent checks, according to charging documents. They determined that he and his co-conspirators were involved in the scheme after reviewing their cell phones, according to officials.

Romero-Delgado had also posted Instagram stories, which investigators found suspicious, court records show. They depicted large sums of cash and showed a TD Bank card for Brandon Baez, one of his co-conspirators.