The Postal Service is working to prevent the use of its collection boxes in these criminal schemes. The USPS has started blocking some of these mailboxes as a result. According to the newspaper, Tom Hanley, a police chief in Middlebury, Vermont, warned that thieves are gaining access to this mail by dropping a weighted device coated with a sticky substance into the collection box to pull it out. This is being referred to as a 'fishing' crime, as thieves are literally fishing for mail that might include checks in these blue boxes, the Addison Independent reported. ' Mail is stolen from these mailboxes and the checks enclosed are being altered, and fraudsters attempt to steal money from the victim's bank account.' ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb 'The USPS blue mailboxes on streets and outside post office buildings that accommodate sending mail during non-business hours for the USPS are not secure,' the association wrote in a separate alert. 2022 that it is seeing an increase in check fraud across the state, largely attributed to checks being stolen out of these blue collection boxes. The Vermont Bankers Association told the Addison Independent in Dec. Thieves appear to have zeroed in on the Postal Service's collection boxes during this recent rise in mail theft. 'Sometimes they can even put some superglue over the signature of the check while washing it, to keep the signature.'īlue collection boxes have played a major part in the increase.

This allows them to 'make out to whomever they want,Ĭhange the dollar amount, and forge the customer signature from the check,' Solomon told AARP. Mail thieves often target financial checks so that they can 'wash' them with a basic household chemical that can dissolve various types of ink, according to Mark Solomon, vice president of the International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators. David Maimon, a professor that researches cyber crimes and mail theft at Georgia State University, told The Crime Report that when he and his team initially started researching mail theft, they only saw about 100 stolen checks a week being sold online.

This is a significant jump from just 24,000 reports two years earlier in 2019. iStockĭata from the USPIS indicates that there were 33,000 reports of incidents involving mail carrier robberies and mail theft in 2021, according to AARP.

Usps blue box