The unofficial motto of the mail carriers of the U.S. Postal Service is: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Whoever came up with that motto apparently forgot about trying to fill an inside straight–some mailmen, it turns out, are doing just that instead of delivering the mail.

According to media reports, when postal customers in Allegheny Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsyvlania, USA, last month complained to their local post office that their mail was often delivered late, township police were dispatched to investigate.

Before long, cops noticed U.S. mail trucks frequently parked outside an area convenience store, the reports said.

Raiding the store, the police found four people–including two uniformed mailmen–playing video poker in a back room, the reports said.

Because playing video poker in Pennsylvania is not illegal unless payouts on winning hands are made, and because the police did not witness anyone getting paid, no one was arrested in the raid, although police did confiscate four video poker machines and $10,000 in cash, the reports said.

Allegheny Township Police Chief John Fontaine said, however, that he believed the machines were being played for money, although his officers did not witness it.

“The machines, they are clearly marked for amusement only,” Fontaine told a local TV station. “When you start paying people for using them, that’s what’s illegal about them.

“We were able to develop some intelligence into what was going on,” he said. “We realized they had some gambling devices in the back room that patrons had access to and were in there for hours on end playing them.”

Although the poker-playing mailmen were not arrested or charged with any crimes, police said they would be disciplined by postal officials, media reports said.

(E-mail Tom Somach @yahoo.com.)