More mail theft victims come forward

Fallbrook residents have come forward with more accounts of mail theft from the drop off bins at the Fallbrook Post Office.

Checks are being stolen out of the blue bins, washed and cashed for much more than they are initially written.

Allen Raymond had several checks stolen out of the blue drop off boxes. Raymond was balancing his checkbook when he noticed that the $19 check he had written to National Geographic had been cashed for $4,008 to “Jonathan A. Vargas” using his forged signature.

“The bank manager and I were chatting, and she said the way they do it, evidently, is they go into these outside drop off boxes with the rat-catching sticky paper, and they drop it in with a couple of strings tied to it. They drop it in face down and cling on to a half dozen or so letters and hope for the best. I lost five or six checks which have never reappeared,” Raymond said.

The bank has since changed Raymond’s account number to prevent any further incidents.

Greg Wilson also had his checks stolen out of the mail in front of the post office.

Wilson and his wife had mailed four checks to three companies. Wilson said that all of the checks were stolen, and one was washed and rewritten for $2,100. The thief changed the payee’s name and forged his wife’s signature.

The person who stole the check did attempt to cash it, but the teller at the bank declined to cash it and called the Wilsons.

The Wilsons were out of town, but when they came back and heard about the check, they closed the checking account immediately.

“We spent nearly 10 hours of our time recovering from this fraudulent event. We did file a police report and filed a report with the USPS. The local post office supervisor was not at all helpful regarding this matter, so we filed a report with the USPS inspector general,” Wilson said.

Wilson also mentioned hearing about thieves using rat tape for fishing through the mailboxes.

The other danger in the sticky tape method is that thieves could be grabbing mail that they don’t find useful while fishing for checks and simply discarding them later, meaning the mail doesn’t ever get where it was going. The Village News reached out to the Fallbrook Post Office to see if they could confirm that sticky tape fishing was the method used in the recent string of crimes, but they could not disclose that information.

The post office did say that there are cameras outside near the blue boxes, but could not disclose whether or not those were used to aid investigations.

The Sheriff’s Department did not have any new tips concerning the prevention of mail theft, but still encouraged residents to drop at the box in the post office or drop right before pick up time if choosing to utilize the blue boxes.

Residents urged to never leave mail sitting out at the post office overnight, no matter which box they drop their mail in. Make the switch to online banking and bill pay, if possible, in order to avoid sending checks in the mail.

If there is no other choice but to send checks, don’t drop them in the blue bins. Never write checks in pencil, marker, Sharpie or colored ink. Use blue or black ink and look into buying fraud prevention pens. Fraud prevention pens use ink that becomes trapped in paper and protects against check washing.

If residents notice any suspicious activity near a blue collection box or any mailbox, make sure to report it to the Sheriff’s Department. Call 911 if there’s an emergency or suspected crime in progress or the Sheriff’s non-emergency line at (760) 728-1113.