Bold thieves struck neighboring Pinellas Park businesses in broad daylight three times in October and November.
Surveillance video from two companies showed a man swiping their outgoing checks.
Allied Fence of Tampa Bay didn’t discover the theft until their bank cashed altered checks totaling more than $3,000. Manager Karla Greene figures the crooks got away with eight outgoing checks—four altered and cashed. The other business, a concrete company, thwarted the scheme before the checks were cashed.
Mail theft related to check fraud has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Banks reported 680,000 instances of check fraud in 2022. The government considers mail fraud, including check fraud, as the country's largest source of illicit proceeds.
In October, Tampa Postal Inspector Damien Krabel told us that protecting the mail and those who deliver it are the Postal Inspection Service's top priorities.
The spike in mail theft coincides with the quadrupling of mail carrier robberies in Florida and across the U.S. in the last four years. The robbers are often armed and steal the keys to cluster mailboxes like those found at apartment complexes.
To further protect postal workers and the mail, the Postal Inspection Service announced last year that it was installing 12,000 high-security collection boxes nationwide and replacing 49,000 key locks on cluster mailboxes with new electronic locks.
But the USPS Office of Inspector General, in a report released last September, said the postal services may not have the resources to tackle mail theft.
Law enforcement recently arrested a handful of suspects in connection with several Tampa Bay area robberies. But most of these cases go unsolved, so consumers need to protect themselves.
Never mail a check unless you hand it to your mail carrier to drop it off inside the post office.
