PORTLAND — An Auburn man was sentenced to more than four years in prison Wednesday for his role in the robberies of two postal carriers and burglaries of two post offices in central Maine earlier this year.

Winston O. McLeod Submitted photo

Winston O. McLeod, 31, appeared in U.S. District Court where Judge Nancy Torresen imposed a sentence of 57 months, plus three years on supervised release.

McLeod pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to rob U.S. postal carriers and to burglarize U.S. post offices, as well as two counts of burglary of a U.S. post office. He also pleaded guilty to robbery of a U.S. postal carrier.

Torresen told McLeod there’s “something appalling about holding up a postal carrier.”

She also said, “you weren’t a very good burglar,” noting he had dropped his cellphone in the snow outside one post office he burglarized.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Noah Falk told the judge McLeod should be sentenced to the high end of the sentencing guideline range, which was five years and 11 months.

McLeod’s criminal conduct was “extremely troubling,” Falk said.

The postal keys sought by McLeod and his co-defendant, 31-year-old Lance Funderburk of Orange, New Jersey, “fetch $10,000 apiece” on the black market, Falk said, because they can open any of the blue mailboxes found on the street into which postal customers entrust personal communications, checks and other valuable correspondence.

“In the wrong hands, they become instruments of human misery,” Falk said.

He said the stolen property was recovered, so prosecutors weren’t seeking restitution.

McLeod apologized to his fiancee, who lives in New Jersey with their child. He also apologized to his victims and to the court.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said. “I’m deeply sorry.”

Torresen noted McLeod’s trauma-filled upbringing in Brooklyn, New York, where he was abused, stabbed, grazed by a bullet and lived in poverty. He was surrounded by crime and never knew his father.

Sports occupied his time during high school, where he excelled as a basketball player, but he later became involved in substance abuse in an effort to treat his depression, his attorney, Mark Peltier, said.

McLeod told Torresen he was a loser, a description of himself the judge rejected.

Nine letters written to the court on McLeod’s behalf describe him as a loving partner and father, Torresen said.

In January, McLeod, and Funderburk broke into post offices in Paris and North Monmouth and stole money order printers, mail, computers, post office box keys and other items.

Afterward, the two men robbed two Lewiston postal carriers on Jan. 20, threatening to stab each one with a knife unless they turned over their postal keys.

The two men were arrested after a traffic stop.

A search of the men and the white Jeep that matched a vehicle seen in videos from each crime scene produced a black butterfly knife, black ski mask, large sums of cash, and several checks determined to have been stolen from the Paris post office.

When responding to the Paris location, postal inspectors also found two iPhones in the snow directly beneath the broken window used to access the post office.

Investigators were able to identify McLeod through a photo of him on the lock screen of one of the phones. Law enforcement recovered additional stolen items at and near the address where the two men had been staying.

Funderburk pleaded guilty last month in federal court to four felonies in connection to the case.

His sentencing date has not been set.