Mail theft in valley on rise

Jen Lawson

Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004 | 11:23 a.m.

Mail theft, a $60-million crime nationwide, is very preventable, Vic Fenimore, local spokesman for the local U.S. Postal Service said. Here are some ways to protect yourself:

Never leave mail in your mailbox overnight.

Monitor your bank account activity for unauthorized transactions.

Shred personal account information that contains personal identifiers such as Social Security number and date of birth.

If you believe you are a victim of mail theft, report it to postal inspectors at 796-5272 or online at www.usps.com /postalinspectors.

Under the cover of darkness thieves have been forcing open residential cluster mailboxes and making off with armfuls of mail -- mortgage documents, bank statements, insurance paperwork -- anything that can be used in identity theft.

Mailbox break-ins are spiking in Clark County: The U.S. Postal Service investigated 79 in October and 176 in November.

And with the promise of cash and checks stuffed in holiday cards this month, authorities also expect December's numbers to be high, local postal service spokesman Vic Fenimore said. Last December there were 123 reported mailbox break-ins.

Each break-in involves multiple victims -- called "volume attacks" by investigators -- so the actual number of people affected could be in the thousands, postal inspector Don Obritsch said.

"We're looking bad in terms of trends," he said.

Thieves are most likely to hit at night, stealing outgoing mail or mail that residents have neglected to retrieve from their boxes, authorities said.

The cluster mailboxes, which are more common in Clark County than the single-standing ones, are more popular targets because the payoff is greater. It takes more effort to sneak from house to house, raiding individual mailboxes, Obritsch said.

Mail is stolen more frequently in affluent areas, particularly gated communities, with the exception of Summerlin, he said.

"Summerlin isn't getting hit," Orbritsch said. "We're not sure why."

The Aliante area in North Las Vegas is currently being hit hard, he said, as is northeast Las Vegas.

Mail thieves are creating fake picture identification cards and using chemicals to wash the information off of checks, keeping the signature intact, and rewriting them for cash. Investigators have noticed that checks stolen from those areas are being cashed at area Albertsons supermarkets.

Obritsch said he investigated a case a few years ago involving a husband and wife who were producing counterfeit IDs from their car. They stole mail from boxes and using a laptop, portable printer and lamination machine they were making decent reproductions of Oregon driver's licenses.

Thieves are also using bank account information to create counterfeit checks using personal computer systems, getting lines of credit and generally wreaking havoc on victims' lives and credit reports.

During the federal government's 2004 fiscal year, October 2003 to September 2004, there were 527 volume attacks, a decrease from fiscal year 2003, when there were 583.

The decrease can be attributed to the resources that the postal service has been pouring on the problem, Obritsch said. Those efforts resulted in 87 arrests in fiscal year 2004 and 53 in 2003.

Mail thieves tend to work in groups, and nearly all are seeking funding for their methamphetamine addictions, Obritsch said.

Swiping mail is an easy path to identity theft, but Greg Marchio, special agent in charge at the Secret Service in Las Vegas, said it's not believed to be the primary source.

Dumpster diving was a popular way for identity thieves to find personal information two or three years ago, but mail theft seems to be eclipsing that method, Metro Police Detective Gene Olewinski said.

But Lt. Steve Franks, head of Metro's financial crimes section, said it's difficult to gauge how many mail thefts lead to identity thefts since information used in identity theft is commonly sold or traded in the criminal underworld.

"There's really no way to backtrack it," he said. "That's the thing that scares most people. Was it my doctor? Was it my accountant? Was it the cop that stopped me?"