Tryston Tremaine Vaughn, indicted as the leader of a $23 million Houston-area mail theft scheme, was out on a $600,000 bond for a 2025 murder charge in Fort Bend County when the fraud indictment was handed down.
Federal prosecutors indicted Tryston Tremaine Vaughn as the alleged leader of a scheme that stole and resold roughly $23 million in checks from Houston-area mail routes over about six years. Records show Vaughn was free on a $600,000 bond for a March 2025 murder charge in Fort Bend County at the time of the federal indictment. Stafford police say Vaughn opened fire on a car while hunting for a man he believed stole a $92,000 necklace, killing 22-year-old bystander Kerry Thomas.
The man federal prosecutors say masterminded a $23 million check theft operation that used Houston-area postal carriers as inside recruits was already out on bond for murder when the indictment came down.
Tryston Tremaine Vaughn is one of five people a federal grand jury has charged with bank fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud in connection with a scheme prosecutors say ran for roughly six years, beginning in 2022. According to the indictment, Vaughn recruited at least three U.S. Postal Service carriers on Houston-area routes to pull checks directly out of the mail stream before they reached their intended recipients.
Records show Vaughn was free on a $600,000 bond tied to a murder charge out of Fort Bend County at the time the federal case was filed. Stafford police say Vaughn opened fire on a moving car in a motel parking lot off the Southwest Freeway in March last year while looking for a man he believed had stolen a $92,000 necklace from him. The bullets missed their apparent target and instead killed 22-year-old Kerry Thomas, whom police described as a bystander. According to his obituary, Thomas had moved to the Houston area with his family after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
Vaughn was arrested on the murder charge last March and posted bond in May. He was also charged with theft of a firearm, though the Fort Bend County District Attorney's Office says that charge hasn't been formally filed and will be handled alongside the murder case. A spokesperson for the DA's office said prosecutors are aware of the federal fraud case and have coordinated with federal authorities so neither investigation compromises the other, adding that the murder charge and the mail fraud charges are not connected.
Records also show Vaughn has previous arrests in Harris County on charges including assault of a family member, unauthorized use of a vehicle, violation of a protective order and weapons offenses. Four of those five prior cases ended in dismissal.
In the mail theft case, prosecutors say Vaughn and co-defendant Alyssa Nadine Bryant resold nearly $24 million in stolen checks. The indictment names three postal workers as the source of the stolen mail: Catherine Clauzelle Kilpatrick, who worked out of the Greens North Station at 1530 Greens Mark Drive; Drakkor Jamar Alexander, assigned to the Spring Main Post Office at 1411 Wunsche Loop; and Malcolm Tiree Joubert, who worked out of the Windmill Station at 9898 Almeda Genoa Road. All three face additional charges of theft of mail matter by a postal employee.
Prosecutors allege the carriers pulled checks from residential and business mail routes and passed them to Vaughn and Bryant, who then advertised and sold the checks through an encrypted Telegram channel called "Slips and Chips." Buyers paid for the checks and received them by FedEx, according to the indictment. Stolen checks identified in court records ranged from $16,000 to $80,000, including one for $25,000, with the largest a check for $1,517,875.27 that Joubert allegedly stole from a BMO Bank account in 2024 and sold to Vaughn. Bryant is separately accused of selling a stolen check to a buyer for $25,000.
The indictment names Chase, Amegy, Citibank, BMO and Stellar banks as the institutions defrauded in the scheme. The government has said it will pursue a monetary judgment and seek forfeiture of property if the defendants are convicted.
As of Monday, four of the five people charged in the federal case were in custody. Kilpatrick pleaded not guilty that day. Vaughn is also in custody on the federal charges. Bryant and Alexander's custody status was not immediately detailed in court records reviewed this week.
Houston residents reacting to news of the scheme said it has changed how they think about their own mail. "I feel like that definitely wasn't right. That's a given," one resident, Suraj Bose, said of the allegations. Another, Jay Dinklage, called the scale of the alleged theft "staggering," saying, "$23 million is not just something you find lying around in a city like Houston. They were probably pretty good at it." A third resident, Lila Molina, said the case left her with lingering worry about whether checks sent through the mail are safe.
All five defendants face federal bank fraud and conspiracy charges, and the three postal workers face separate federal charges for stealing mail while employed by USPS. The charges remain allegations, and each defendant is presumed innocent unless convicted in court.
Vaughn's murder case in Fort Bend County and his federal fraud case are proceeding on separate tracks, according to the district attorney's office, with no trial date yet set in either matter as of this week.
