Seven ways to protect yourself from mail thieves

CHARLOTTE — Over the last few months, Action 9 has discovered several cases involving stolen mail in the Charlotte area.

Sometimes, thieves steal mail right out of your mailbox while others are bolder and steal a letter carrier’s keys so they can help themselves to the big blue mailboxes.

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Thieves stealing money is just one problem. Fortunately, banks are pretty good about resolving that. But criminals can also use the information they find in the mail to steal people’s identities, which can be harder to resolve.

Cynthia Smith told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke she mailed three checks at Park Road Shopping Center in Charlotte. “Thinking they went to where they’re supposed to go because that’s what normally happens,” she said.

Smith says none of them got to the right people. However, someone stole them, endorsed one of the checks, and cashed it.

She told Stoogenke someone using the same name altered even more information on the other two checks. “The date, the amount, who it was made out to, and my signature,” she said.

She showed Stoogenke the carbon copies of each check in her checkbook, and the images she says the bank sent her of the cashed checks.

One check was originally for $300 but the photo the bank sent her shows someone changed it to $1,000.

Another check was originally written for $476, but the altered version that made it to the bank was for $1,000.

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“It just makes you leery how far people will go to take your money from you,” Smith said. “And now I got to change how I do business because of what crooked people are doing every day.”

Smith filed a police report and said her bank resolved the issue quickly, but she worries about bigger issues such as identity theft.

The United States Postal Inspection Service told Stoogenke:

“The U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s mission is to support and protect the U.S. Postal Service and its employees, infrastructure, and customers; enforce the laws that defend our nation’s mail system from illegal or dangerous use; and ensure public trust in mail. U.S. Postal Inspectors takes seriously its role to safeguard America and will continue to aggressively pursue perpetrators that use the U.S. Mail system to further their illegal activity. Every day, the U.S. Postal Service safely and efficiently delivers millions of checks, money orders, credit cards and merchandise. Unfortunately, such items are also attractive to thieves and that is why Postal Inspectors across the country are at work to protect your mail.”