PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) - A Georgia man has been sentenced to one year and nine months in federal prison for stealing checks from the mail in the Florida Panhandle as the area was still recovering from Hurricane Michael.
Michaelo Moore, 45, of Stone Mountain, Georgia, was sentenced Tuesday in Panama City federal court, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy to commit mail theft and mail theft.
Panama City police arrested Moore in February 2019, after receiving reports that he had attempted to recruit several members of the city's transient population to help him cash fraudulent checks. A transient man told police that Moore and another man, Maurice Senior, 43, of Atlanta, had offered to pay him to cash several stolen checks found in Moore's possession, prosecutors said. Senior was sentenced in April to 10 months in prison.
Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 10, 2018. It was the first Category 5 storm to strike the contiguous United States since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.