[Leland Pate]

I am soliciting guidance from those who have been through anything like this. I just got off the phone with my little brother and am really bummed out!!!.

Background:

My brother is a gun nut. A couple years ago, he got on a waiting list for some very expensive and highly desirable gun parts from Lage manufacturing. I won't get into the unimportant details, but after a long wait and considerable expense, his long awaited kit was delivered to my mother's house 4 or 5 days ago with "signature required" priority mail service from the USPS. He had it delivered to my mother's because she is usually home whereas he is not. Makes sense. Anyway, the problem we are having is my mother never got the package.
When Eric logged on-line to see what the heck happened he saw that it was marked as delivered and signed for by "E. Pate". Well, he didn't sign for it and my mother didn't sign for it. My mom looked at the timestamp and has said she was home when it was supposedly "delivered". Eric looked at the scanned image of the signature and doesn't recognize it (obviously). So, what the hell happened??? It really doesn't matter. He didn't get his parts and I am cynical enough to know that he is really standing alone on this issue with no one in particular who cares about his loss. The shipper doesn't care because he's already been paid. The USPS thinks their butt is covered because they've got a "signature".

Like I said, I really don't care to speculate on what may have happened to his parts as it is unlikely they are just going to reappear. Whoever has them, has them intentionally and by fraud. I am wondering what advice I can give him as a recommended course of action here. He is going to have to convince someone in the USPS that fraud was committed if he has any chance of successfully making an insurance claim, right?

Can anyone offer us any advice?

My little brother is a very good guy who works his heart out to afford the relatively few nice things he has. I think that's what upsets me the most here.

Any advice or suggestions would be very welcome!