Baytown post office supervisor charged in theft of rare basketball card

A rare basketball card worth $3,617 disappeared from a Baytown outgoing package, then reappeared online with the original buyer watching for it. Investigators say the trail led to a felony case against 44-year-old Kristy Smillie, a supervisor who had worked at the Baytown Post Office for more than eight years.

Rodolfo Silvas said he bought the autographed Cooper Flagg rookie card on eBay in late April. When his girlfriend went to pick up the package at the Baytown Post Office in May because he was not home to sign for it, Silvas later told KPRC 2 that the card case had been removed from the box and that the package had a small incision in it. By early June, he found the same card listed for resale online and reported it to the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General.

That report triggered an undercover buy. Investigators arranged a $700 meeting in a Baytown parking lot on June 5, where police recovered the card and arrested Smillie, court records show. The allegations turned what could have been a lost-package complaint into a criminal case involving a trusted postal employee and a high-value collectible.

Court records say investigators later found marijuana, THC and prescription bottles with names peeled off in Smillie’s car. If the allegations are proven in court, the case could mean both felony consequences and the end of a long postal career at the Baytown office.

The case matters in a city where many residents and small sellers depend on the mail for business shipments, trading cards and other expensive items. Baytown had 83,701 residents in the 2020 census and an estimated population of 86,561 on July 1, 2025, making the post office at 601 W. Baker Rd. a busy local hub. USPS lists retail hours there as Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon.

The Postal Service’s inspector general says it investigates theft of mail items by postal employees or contractors, and recent Houston-area cases show that scrutiny is growing. In one Memorial Park Post Office operation, investigators recovered more than 80 pieces of mail and nine postal keys, and another crackdown turned up 80 pieces of allegedly stolen mail and nine real postal keys. Together, the cases show how quickly a single breach can ripple across a whole delivery system.

For residents shipping collectibles, the lesson is blunt: keep receipts, photos, tracking numbers and messages tied to the sale, and check packages immediately for cuts, missing cases or signs they were reopened. When a postal employee is suspected, the clearest recourse is to save the evidence, report it to the Postal Service’s inspector general and let investigators follow the paper trail.