The Case of the Missing Mail

My apologies in advance for bringing up a mildly disturbing true short story during this season of good cheer. I've wrestled with myself about posting this, but I believe that knowledge makes you a better person, and perhaps others may learn something that will help protect them from a similar fate:

The Scene

We've lived at our current address for 20 years, which is an unusually long period in our city. Several neighbors have also lived here as long, or longer. We are on a quiet tree-lined suburban cul-de-sac, off yet another quiet street, populated with single-family detached homes. Its the picture of American suburbia, stable, quiet, even boring. We feel secure and safe, and we like it here. Our immediate neighborhood isn't crime-free, but crime is relatively rare. Except for residents, delivery trucks, gardeners, and the occasional lost driver, we do not get much traffic. And as odd as it is in these days of two-income families, there are several stay-at-home moms (and one dad) who are at home (hence the name) during the day. The point is, our neighborhood is never deserted. Our street would not be my first choice as a good location to commit a crime, but no one asked me. And if it can happen to us here, it can happen to anyone anywhere.

The Evidence

Last Wednesday, shortly after leaving a few outgoing letters and raising her mailbox flag, my next-door neighbor, I'll call her 'LG', returned from her walk and saw that the mailbox door was ajar. Looking inside, she found it empty. Although she is by nature a trusting person, alarms began to go off inside her head, faintly at first, but louder and louder by the second. First of all, like most of us, LG almost always receives mail, at least some junk mail, every day. Second, our mail carrier is as reliable as a clock, normally delivering the mail about 3 pm, yet it was only about noon, and third, she always closes the mailbox door. Finally, looking down the street, LG could see that our mailbox flag was up, and, running over to check it, she found it empty with the door lying open. She did not know for certain that the mail carrier had not just made the rounds, and that there simply was no mail for either of us that day, nor whether or not we had also put mail out for pickup as she had (though our flag was up). Taken together, all of these clues were screaming out, 'Something is just not right'. Would the mailman be this early during the holiday season? Where was the outgoing or incoming mail? and Why were the mailbox doors just hanging open on both our empty mailboxes? (Tune in tomorrow night for another episode of Tales of the Mail).

The Facts

It seemed to LG that in the short period of 30 minutes, her mail had simply vanished, and was, possibly, stolen. No one saw what happened, she could only conjecture. It seemed from the evidence, by no means conclusive at the time, that a person or persons unknown (as they say) had taken the mail from our curbside mailboxes. Not every house was hit, just the two on our side of the cul-de-sac, as far as is known. But later that same day our mail carrier confirmed "There was no early delivery or pickup". Now LG knew for certain that her mail had been stolen, and in all likelihood, ours as well. She probably thought, 'This can't be happening'. It may have been hard to accept, but these were just the facts (ma'am), the cold, hard immutable facts. We know* exactly how she felt.
(*On two occasions our car was stolen and each time after discovering our loss, we looked for several minutes in and around where it ought to have been parked, thinking that somehow we just missed it, and it would reappear and all would be made right. Denial is a strong emotion.)

The Motive

According to our carrier, mail thieves are most often seeking checks to be altered and cashed, or checking account numbers for ordering new blank checks. Another possibility is 'cloning' a credit card. Of course the motives could be worse, much worse. I don't want to think about the possibility of identity theft, because its too disturbing.

The Method

They came, (most likely driving a car) acted, and left quickly so as not to be seen, 'stealthily like a thief in the night', except that it was broad daylight. They did not check every mailbox, which would have taken too long, only those which had their red flags up, which seemed to be saying 'Here it is, come and get it.' In another criminal context, this would be known as 'smash and dash'. Same idea here, but without the smash part, lets call it 'scoop and scoot'. In their haste the thieves left a valuable clue behind -- a trail (albeit short) of open, empty mailboxes -- without which LG might not have suspected something was amiss.

The Opportunity

It may just have been our turn to be victims, but we also provided the opportunity. Mail theft is a surprisingly easy crime to commit, no training, no education, no skill is required. All that is needed is the opportunity, well, a car might be useful. The chances of getting caught in the act, are seemingly quite low. As (bad) luck would have it, both LG and I sent checks in our outgoing mail that day. We raised the flag on our mailboxes, and the thieves simply helped themselves.

The Aftermath

After distressing about the situation for a short time, LG called her bank, then went in person, and got a new account number. That evening she came over to tell me her suspicions about what had occurred. At first I wasn't sure what to make of it, but then, even though it was late, well beyond bankers hours, I phoned the bank (well actually the credit union) and was surprised to find the phone answered by a live employee, rather than a call center. I put a stop payment on the range of checks I had written, paid the $20 fee, thinking all the while, "But what if this is a false alarm?" I also checked my credit card account online -- No new charges, good, I'll continue to watch it daily. Meanwhile I racked my brain, since I had sent several checks, several letters, even a medical health survey, 'Did I forget any items? Is there a risk to my bank account? What else could/should I do?' I will have to get a new checking account number, but I have to transfer all the automated payments first.

Post Mortem

On Saturday, I received a large envelope from the Post Office. Inside was all the correspondence I had sent two days before, complete with the contents inside, except for the checks. The contents exactly confirmed what I thought I was missing. LG's purloined mail was similarly returned to her. Someone apparently found a pile of mail dumped out in the street and turned it in to the Post Office which in turn returned it to the senders. According to an article I read, some thieves have a signature -- 'Leave the mailbox door open and dump the remainder of the mail in a public place'. That pretty much describes what we think happened. All my envelopes had been hastily ripped open, and rather crudely, in one case even tearing the contents nearly in half (wonder what happened to that check). Pfft, amateurs! Real men use professional tools -- at least get a letter opener. The postmaster sent a cover letter with the remains:

Postmaster
[City]
United States Postal Service
December 7, 2006

[Name]
[Address]
[City, State Zip]

Dear Postal Customer,

The enclosed mail was found, in its current condition, in the street in [City]. How it came to be in the street is unknown. We suspect this incident may be related to vandalism and/or mail theft.

We are returning your mail so you are aware that a problem did occur. If you need to notify your correspondents of this delay, please send them a copy of this letter. I would hope they will extend every consideration available.

If you or your correspondents have any questions please call me at the [City] Post Office at [Phone].

Sincerely,

[Name]
Supervisor Customer Service

Analysis

What follows is my amateur analysis of this type of crime. I am not a criminal expert and have no idea if the numbers or calculations presented are realistic or completely off the mark. I do not encourage nor condone anyone engaging in any criminal activity and in this case, I believe the chances of being caught are fairly high. What I hope is that this discourse will give you pause to think about your mailing habits and perhaps learn to protect yourself from mail theft.

If you do a Google search for 'mail theft' you begin to realize it is big-time crime. I learned that most mail thieves steal checks, alter the amount drawn, to pay out a higher but realistically plausible amount, i.e. ten dollars might become one hundred. I surmise the payee also has to be changed to some name for which the thief has identification other than his own (possibly stolen). These forged checks are good enough to fool banks or wherever it is they get cashed (imagine that). The USPS seems proud to claim that 6000 mail theft suspects were apprehended last year. (I assume many more were not caught, but even those 6000 had successful thefts before being caught).

What are my chances of becoming a victim?

If we assume that the 6000 apprehended suspects represent from 5 to 20% of a stable population of mail thieves, then the total number is somewhere between 30,000 and 120,000 thieves. Mail thefts and apprehensions continue unabated year after year, so there have to be new thieves entering the profession at about the same rate as those leaving. If the estimate of a 20% apprehension rate is correct, it means the Postal Inspectors are doing a d--n fine job, but it also implies a high turnover rate. If the apprehension rate were significantly higher, like 50-80%, thefts would probably be on the decline. I can't imagine it being that high, though, since at 80% there would only be 1500 thieves left. If the apprehension rate, however, is just 5%, then the population of thieves is 120,000. I suppose this is possible as it is less than 0.5 percent of the population. I'm going to give credit to the Postal Inspectors and say there are 30000 active mail thieves, of which 6,000 (20%) are caught and replaced each year All thieves are probably lazy, so lets say, on average, in order to support themselves each one of the 30,000 needs to steal the outgoing mail from 40 mailboxes (of which half or 20 contain checks) per week. Whether this is accomplished in a single humongous annual binge, a monthly or weekly ritual, or by collecting from a few mailboxes every day doesn't matter, this comes to 1,200,000 mailbox thefts per week, or 62.4 million per year. There are now 300 million Americans, so if the average household size is 3 people, there are 100 million households. That implies there is about a 50-50 chance your mail will be stolen at least once in the coming year. Of course the number of thieves or their 'production' rate might be more or less than I've assumed. Do you doubt this? The rest of this analysis describes other assumptions and calculations.

How hard is it to steal the mail?

Think about it, the thief drives around a neighborhood slowly, as if lost or looking for something. And he is -- looking for raised mailbox flags. If he sees one, he scans the area for anyone who might be a potential witness. If there is no one around, he opens the mailbox, scoops out the contents and scoots, otherwise he simply continues on and drives away without taking anything (and with due deliberation, after all he hasn't done anything wrong -- yet) there are plenty of fish in the sea (actually there aren't but that's a different kettle of fish entirely). He has a cover story, just in case: "Do you know where (some nearby address) is, or "I'm looking for a lost dog", and he may even have some advertising fliers for the lost dog or a legitimate business or product, so he can claim to be distributing them (putting a flyer in mailboxes would be his excuse when caught in the act of opening someones mailbox, but I don't know what he'd say if caught with mail in hand). But hey, if I can come up with a reasonable cover story in 2 minutes, a thief ought to be able to come up with a few really good ones if their life and livelihood depended on it. And though the penalty is high, mail theft and check forgery are Federal crimes, I don't think that worries the perps. Anyways the stealing part seems like it would be easy.

How often do mailboxes contain checks?

Although you might count flagged mailboxes you have no legal way of determining if there are checks or even mail inside so don't even try. I shouldn't need to caution you that its not proper or polite, and it may well be illegal to open and look inside other people's boxes -- something about 'official use only'. I believe it is illegal for an ordinary citizen to put anything into a private mailbox (including advertising or those lost dog flyers I just mentioned). Those party invitations and thank-you cards to your neighbors could get you in trouble.

To avoid all the problems of coming up with supportable numbers, I'll just wildly guess that on average, 50% of households put checks out in their mailbox and they do so twice per month, so the overall average is one check mailing per household per month. With 25 mailing days per month, one would expect to find checks in 1 out of every 25 mailboxes. Most bills are due at the beginning or end of the month, so there are probably good and bad times during the month to collect outgoing payments, but I'll ignore that minor detail. When I pay bills, it is often in batches of two, three or more, so if this is a common practice, then the average number of checks in mailboxes containing checks would be greater than one. I'll assume that the number of checks sent each time averages two. But wait, you say, "People send a lot of other things in the mail besides checks". A good point, I do too, so I will assume this happens 50% of the time although it probably is much higher. If my numbers are correct, half of the flags represent mail with checks and half without. Keep in mind that the number of checks to be found has only to do with how often checks are put out in the mailboxes, so if a larger fraction of mailings do not contain checks this would only increase the false alarms (flagged mail boxes with no checks) rather than decrease the net take. We're conditioned to raise the flag so the postman will know that we have outgoing mail, but not everyone does this. In fact, it seems that the current piece of advice is - don't (raise the flag). So I'll assume that only half of the people raise the flag when they put out mail. Given the previously stated assumptions, the number of raised flags would be 2 of every 50 mailboxes and half of those (or one mailbox) would contain checks. It would, however, contain two checks, so the thief's net 'take' would be 2 checks per 50 mailboxes. It could be a higher or lower number depending on the assumptions, but my assumptions don't seem unreasonable (to me). Bottom line, every 50 mailboxes (regardless of flag position) contains four checks, two of these are in flagged mailboxes. You may have a different opinion about the assumptions I've made, but hey its not that hard -- you can do the math.

(more thoughts on false positives). The thief does not want to open the 48 additional mailboxes just to find that other one containing a check, but in any case he has to collect the mail from all the flagged mailboxes, just to find one that does. If the rate of mailboxes containing mail, but with no flags rises above some threshold, the thieves will simply check each mailbox regardless of whether the flag is up or down. That threshold (given my other assumptions) is 50%. Once the number of flagged mailboxes reaches 50%, the thief may as well look in the unflagged mailboxes in addition to the flagged ones, since he will acquire the additional checks at the same rate. There will be additional checkless mail that gets stolen, but all checks would be captured. Still it would increase the probability of being caught since the thief would have to check all the mailboxes and would loiter in the neighborhood. Into every life a little rain must fall. (what if a significant number of people just raised the flag when checks or even mail were NOT present).

We assumed earlier that each thief steals from 20 check-containing mailboxes per week. We computed there is on average one check in a flagged mailbox for every 25 houses passed. So to steal 40 checks involves passing 25 times as many mailboxes or 500 mailboxes and stealing the mail from all flagged mailboxes.

How much income would the resulting 40 checks produce?

I doubt if the thieves would do the crime if it meant hours of work for a few measly dollars, so I'm guessing it's lucrative. First, how much money do the crooks get for each stolen check? I'll go out on a limb and guess that most bills are between ten and one-hundred dollars, discounting large checks like insurance and mortgage payments. Any less, and why bother, any more and the bank or check cashing place, is going to scrutinize the check more closely. If the amount is not in a satisfactory range, the thief would have to alter it which only increases the risk of detection. Here, laziness is sometimes an advantage, if more money is needed, just steal more checks. Lets just say the average check is cashed for fifty dollars. So when the mail thief 'processes' 50 houses, he ultimately collects $50 each for the two checks he finds and steals. $100 for driving slowly by 50 houses, are you kidding me? For the week, the 40 checks he collects yields $2000 (40 checks x $50 = $2000). $104K per year ($2k x 52 weeks) ought to be more than enough for most people to survive on.

But how long does this take?
Lets assume that the thief, being equally lazy and unambitious as greedy and dishonest, only wants to work a few hours per month. How many hours per month does the thief have to put in driving around stealing mail? If a typical neighborhood lot is 88 feet wide, at 10 miles per hour (880 feet per minute) he can drive by 10 houses in one minute. The thief has to drive by 50 houses to collect four checks (worth $200 total) on average, and steal all mail from every flagged mailboxes he passes. To drive by 500 mailboxes takes 50 minutes. Lets round that up to an hour to allow for stopping and collecting the checks as well as travel to and from his work site and between neighborhoods (which occurs at faster than 10 mph). Hmmm, lets see, one hour, 500 mailboxes passed, stole from all 20 flagged mailboxes, 10 contain checks, 20 checks found, $50 per check, $1000 net. $1000 per hour! that's more than his future public defender is going to be paid. The thief needs to put in two hours on this task weekly, unless he is satisfied with a mere $52k annually for one hour of hard back-breaking work each week.

What else does the thief have to do?
Now the thief has to turn 40 checks into cash each week, 173 per month, 2080 per year. This part is going to take a while, since one presumably can't just walk in each week to your bank with 40 checks drawn on 20 different accounts made out to 40 different payees and cash them all at once, even on a good day. The checks have to be erased, altered, and cashed at multiple locations a few at a time. So there is the erasing/forging operation, phony IDs and addressing, driving to the bank, etc. which all takes time and perhaps some skill. -- Ugh it sure is a lot of work being a crook.

I can just about see and hear the late night commercials: "Tired of your current low-paying, dead-end job? Would you like to work only two hours per week while being your own boss? Are you an independent, self starter? If you have good handwriting skills and own a car, you can make $1000 per hour." Disclaimer in low tones. "This job may require certain technical skills and be illegal in some areas. The sponsor and this station are not responsible for your results. Applicants must be willing to spend a few years in jail" So you are not a believer yet? Well, you are free to make other assumptions and do the simple math. Let me know what you think.

What are a thief's chances of being caught? (this section needs work)
in the act of stealing? for one theft, low, but eventually... (video surveillance, etc.) forging the checks, printing new checks, which most victims will not know are missing yet? depends a lot on skill levels, cashing the checks? high at first, but with experience eventually low, but cumulatively, high. This is where the thief is virtually certain, eventually, to get caught. Maybe the 20% apprehension rate is not unreasonable. Being a crook has its good and bad sides. electronic funds transfers, using cc acount numbers? unknown -- skill set, again.

Epilogue Random Thoughts:
1) Discovering this crime early before (much) damage could occur was a fluke. We all need to watch out for each other. Thank you to my wonderful neighbor.
2) We think nothing of sending checks, credit card numbers and other important and valuable information by mail, but surprise, surprise -- its not safe.
3) Check printers should be required to verify account addresses with the issuing bank -- they're not AFAIK
4) Be Mail-safe: Don't leave the mailbox flag up, its a signal to thieves. Never leave anything of value in your mailbox, take it to the corner drop-off mailbox or Post Office. Retrieve your mail promptly. Watch out for your neighbors. No dummy, they aren't the thieves, I mean help each other. Report suspicious activity. Get a locking mailbox. If you regularly receive valuables in the mail consider getting a Post Office box. Really paranoid? -- Remote video camera.
5) Be Credit-safe: Get rid of all those credit cards you never use. I suggest you have only two. One for everyday use (get one with a cash-back rebate and pay it off every month), and one for emergencies, Or if you are married, each spouse should get a separate credit account, but both parties should be able to charge on them (assuming you are comfortable with that). Lock up the extra cards.
6) Protect yourself from identity theft, shredding documents, credit cards, don't give out personal information over the phone. Don't deal with phone salesmen that call you, Period.
7) Choose good passwords for online accounts (8+ characters, with upper, lower, numeric and symbols if allowed, no names or real words).
8) Be very very careful with online transactions, there are bogus sites.
9) Don't click on email attachments unless you know what it is, use virus check software, also spy/adware checkers
10) gas prices, dirty bombs, terrorist attacks, airport security, and now mail theft. What's one more thing to worry about?