WARREN COUNTY — Our I-Team is tracking the problems people are having with their mail getting stolen.
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The I-Team’s John Bedell looked into a new warning from a local sheriff’s office about an increase in this crime.
The Warren County Sheriff’s Office posted a scam alert on social media saying they’ve had an increase in mail theft complaints, including several victims saying they’ve put checks in their mailboxes to pay bills, only to find out the checks have been stolen, washed, and deposited into fraudulent accounts.
“At this point, the mail theft is at crisis levels,” Frank Albergo, postal police officers association national president, said. “Criminals adapt. They figure out new and exciting ways to steal mail. and now it’s out of residential boxes.”
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He told the I-Team that mail theft is changing.
Albergo says the number of letter carriers getting violently robbed many times at gunpoint, some even here in the Miami Valley, have decreased.
“They’re not robbing letter carriers as often,” Albergo said. “Why risk a violent robbery when you can get your hands on an arrow key or the mail in another way?”
In a series of I-Team investigations, News Center 7 reported how letter carriers are often targeted for their arrow keys.
They’re master keys that open bulk mail boxes.
Last summer, we reported on the group of suspects arrested for using sticky mouse traps to steal mail out of the blue drop box at the post office in Springboro.
While Albergo says the crime has changed the checks thieves are after, making mail theft a crime that impacts your money and your identity.
“Mail theft is a street-level crime. The problem is that the downstream effects are massive. I mean, it leads to banking fraud, identity theft, account takeovers,” Albergo said.
News Center 7 talked to Warren County’s prosecutor today.
He said in these recent Warren County cases, the sheriff’s office is talking about whether suspects are identified and caught, he’d have conversations with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to decide whether they’d prosecute in state or federal court.
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