A young man was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for the armed robberies of three postal service employees in separate incidents around Albuquerque.
Cisco Casaus-Alires, 21, pleaded guilty in June to robbery of mail, money and other federal property and brandishing a firearm in the 2020 robberies.
“Casaus-Alires is no longer a threat to (U.S. Postal Service) letter carriers or the public. This substantial sentence is a message to all criminals,” Melisa Llosa, inspector in charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Phoenix, said in a statement. “If you rob a USPS employee, Postal Inspectors will not stop until you are brought to justice.”
Casaus-Alires was previously sentenced to supervised probation after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit armed robbery in a 2016 drive-by shooting that killed Aliyah Garcia, 18.
Casaus-Alires’ brother and others were sentenced to more than a decade in prison in the case.
Casaus-Alires caught the attention of federal authorities in 2020 when three letter carriers were robbed at gunpoint within months of each other.
It began on Nov. 7, when Casaus-Alires pulled out a gun on a letter carrier in Southeast Albuquerque — demanding the person’s cellphone, mailbox keys and some mail. Casaus-Alires robbed two other mail carriers in similar fashion, on Dec. 26 and 28, demanding the same items and, in the first instance, told the letter carrier to load packages from their vehicle into his own.
Authorities were tipped off that Casaus-Alires was responsible by a confidential informant before he was arrested the following month, telling Albuquerque police he had robbed the three letter carriers.
