Mail theft not just a holiday problem

PALMER — It seemed like a holiday related problem, hence the Frontiersman post on Facebook last week.

“We’re getting reports that a Grinchy person stole mail out of neighborhood mail boxes in Wasilla, Knik and Meadow Lakes during the Christmas holiday. We’re trying to find out how many people may have had mail stolen recently.”

A few people wrote back to say they’d had mail missing in the week leading up to the holidays. But it seems that the problem is more widespread than that. Many more comments came from folks who’d experienced this in the past, some on a regular basis.

“We have had our mail stolen 3 times in the last year, plus one day when I was leaving for work someone took all the mail from everyone’s boxes and scattered it all over the road and in to the woods,” Mary Jo Werschey said.

“I’ve never had so many packages gone ‘missing’ until we moved to a HC route. It’s bizarre,” Vanessa Reinhardt added.

So what have Alaska State Troopers heard? Pretty much the same, apparently.

“Lt. Rob French said there has been an occasional mail theft and troopers haven’t necessarily seen an upswing in mail theft in particular during the holidays,” AST spokeswoman Beth Ipsen writes in an email.

She said that one misconception is that it’s a federal crime to steal mail. That’s true, she said, for mail that’s en route to the mailbox. Stealing undelivered mail is a federal crime.

“If the mail is stolen after it’s delivered, it’s the state’s (responsibility) to investigate rather than a federal offense. Most often, the act of stealing mail is only a minor misdemeanor theft charge,” Ipsen says.

Misdemeanors can turn into felonies, though, depending on what the thief does with those purloined letters.

Using a credit card stolen from a mailbox is fraudulent use of an access device. Writing someone else’s checks is forgery.

“The crimes committed after stealing mail are typically what gets investigated more than the stealing of mail in the first place,” she said.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the theft itself isn’t a crime or isn’t wrong. And it’s certainly annoying, even more so at the holidays.

“Nothing spoils the holidays easier than the check your grandma mailed got stolen by a person with a drug problem,” Ipsen wrote.

She suggested locking mailboxes, though Frontiersman Facebook friends say that’s not always a solution.

“We even had a lock box mailbox as well, but they reached through the delivery slot and stole it,” Alice Edwards wrote.

“I had my locked mailbox jimmied open on Christmas, they didn’t get anything, mail doesn’t come on Christmas,” Virgil Jones wrote, perhaps seriously.

Other tips Ipsen suggested include having the post office hold your mail while you’re away and dropping checks at the post office rather than leaving them in your box for the postman.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.