A time-strapped United States Postal Service worker who was unable to complete deliveries on his Virginia route rented a $49-a-month storage unit into which he dumped about 5000 pieces of undelivered mail, according to a U.S. District Court filing.

Jason Delacruz, who began working as a postal carrier in June 2018, has pleaded guilty to a charge of delaying the delivery of mail. The 38-year-old Delacruz, who resigned his USPS job last year, is scheduled for a February 12 sentencing on the felony count.

Delacruz’s scheme was disrupted when he was spotted "unloading mail into a public storage facility" in Virginia Beach. A witness “snapped several photographs of the postal employee and a picture of the license plate of the employee’s vehicle” and provided the images to postal officials.

When confronted by federal investigators, Delacruz said he “can’t make time” and felt “pressured” to complete his route, but was unable to do so. He then admitted to “renting the public storage unit for $49 per month for the sole purpose of storing mail he could not deliver.”

Delacruz, who denied stealing any mail, claimed that he “first intended to deliver the mail when he found time, but fell behind and was never able to do so.”

Delacruz, who is free on a personal recognizance bond, faces a maximum of five years in prison for the mail stashing scheme.

Imprisonment, however, seems unlikely for Delacruz based on similar criminal prosecutions.

A postal worker who hid nearly 50,000 pieces of undelivered mail in her California apartment was sentenced in 2017 to three years probation after pleading guilty to the same count as Delacruz. And a New York City mailman who failed to deliver about 40,000 pieces of mail (which agents found stashed in his car, Brooklyn home, and work locker) had the felony case against him dismissed by prosecutors in 2016.