True North Research has obtained the legal filings from a suit filed against Louis DeJoy by his brother Dominick DeJoy, Jr., about how Mr. DeJoy ran the family business and created a nest of companies that excluded his brother.

Although the case ultimately settled with a secrecy agreement, the allegations do not appear to have been examined by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors in hiring Mr. DeJoy to be Postmaster General, after he made more than $600K in donations to help Trump’s reelection campaign.

His close ties to Trump’s efforts to win the 2020 election combined with his disruptive actions as the new head of the Postal Service have raised questions about his agenda for the Postal Service, despite his PR efforts to reassure Americans. On his watch, the Postal Service has told state election officials that ballots may not be delivered in the timetables previously relied upon. He also recently ignored the requests of election officials in Colorado and other states not to distribute misleading information to voters. The Postal Service is now subject to a court order to block that.

Accordingly, the detailed allegations made by his brother claiming a pattern of deception by Mr. DeJoy are important to examine, even though Mr. DeJoy denied any wrongdoing.

Here are the most noteworthy details from the litigation from 1999-2000:

• Dominick DeJoy, Jr., alleged that he and Louis DeJoy along with a third brother were equal one-third partners in the trucking and delivery company their father created in New York, New Breed Inc. This was not denied by Louis DeJoy.

• All three brothers worked for the company in different capacities, with Dominick performing marketing and sales duties to expand the business and the Louis handling the accounting and management because he was an accountant. This was not denied by Louis DeJoy.

• Dominick alleges that Louis DeJoy fraudulently created a series of similarly named companies, like New Breed Leasing Corp., which were part of New Breed Transfer Corp., which he believed were all owned equally but which, in fact, Dominick had no ownerhip in. The majority owner was actually Louis DeJoy, with the third brother holding a minority interest. Louis DeJoy claims he did nothing illegal but that he did create and control these other companies.

• Dominick alleged that in tax filing and other documents Louis DeJoy presented to him the main family business was described as a “parent company” but in fact the other “new companies” were not subsidiaries of it. Louis DeJoy admitted that the term may have been used but that it had no effect and that the term “new companies” was ambiguous.

• Dominick claimed that when he discovered the fact that he had been cut out of the other companies (that is, was never included), that he was induced to sign a stockholder agreement as part of a reorganization to obtain 15% of the businesses (with Louis DeJoy owning 55% of them). However, he alleged that Louis DeJoy tried to sell Dominick’s reduced portion of the company to someone else and provide him with less than the amount of even that small share of the company. Louis DeJoy admitted the percentages in the reorganized companies but denied doing anything wrong.

• Dominick also alleged that Louis DeJoy opened three different bank accounts in his name, forging his signature without his permission, and that he did not know these financial accounts–that held millions of dollars–were in his name. Louis DeJoy claimed they often signed each other names on documents.

• Dominick also alleged that Louis DeJoy hid the mailed bank statements for three different bank or investment accounts in Dominick’s name from him for more than five years, from 1994-2000, or had employees of the company hide that monthly mail from him. Louis DeJoy denied this, but Dominick DeJoy claimed he did not know the accounts existed for years and never received any monthly bank statements and that he only discovered the existence of the accounts in 1999. Louis DeJoy denied those allegations, which are detailed below.

The theft of mail is a crime under 18 U.S.C. 1708, which bars stealing or taking or obtaining someone else’s mail “by fraud or deception.” Conviction of that crime can result in a fine or imprisonment of up to five years and a restriction on voting based on the commission of a felony. The law provides a five-year statute of limitations for mail theft, although the statute of limitations is ten years if the mail theft involved any fraudulent scheme affecting a financial institution. As noted above, Mr. DeJoy denied the sworn complaint his brother signed on January 12, 2000. His brother did not refer his allegations to state or federal authorities in North Carolina.

The case was settled by all parties as part of a secret settlement on January 18, 2001. The filing of this case was covered by reporter Richard Craver in the High Point Enterprise in 2000 in a story titled: “Legal Battle between North Carolina Siblings Alleges Plots, Deception.”

Here is the complete litigation file from the state court in North Carolina:

99cvs12425a (PDF)