READ THIS NEXT: USPS Just Announced This Major Delivery Change, Starting Aug. 1. The Postal Service deals with the correspondences and personal information of millions of people across the U.S. In order to do so effectively and safely, the agency and its employees work to keep the public informed about proper protocol.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb Back in March, one USPS worker took to TikTok to urge people not to mail letters with certain items like coins, cards, keys, and jewelry, as they tend to get ripped out by the machines the agency uses and end up destroying other people’s mail. And just last month, the USPS issued a press release about the “serious threat” that animal attacks are having on carriers around the country. According to the agency, more than 5,400 postal employees were attacked by dogs in the U.S. in 2021 alone. Now, the USPS is issuing a new alert to try to keep customers safe from a major threat. Mail theft has become enough of a concern for the postal agency that they’re now alerting Americans about it. Damien Kriebel, a postal inspector for the USPS in Tampa, Florida, told local CBS-affiliate WTSP on July 25 that homeowners should be taking precautions to avoid getting their mail stolen. According to Kriebel, the number one way to keep your mail safe from thieves is to routinely empty your mailbox. “The key is to not leave your mail in your mailbox unattended,” he said. “You wouldn’t leave your car unlocked with important documents on the front seat, and you shouldn’t leave documents sitting in an unlocked mailbox either.” RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter. On July 21, a couple in Tampa caught someone lurking around mailboxes in their neighborhood on their home surveillance camera, according to WTSP. “It’s a black pick-up truck and it comes up to our mailbox and somebody leans out of the truck and opens the mailbox, closes it, and they drive on,” homeowner Gary Ashbaugh told the news outlet. “They went to the next house because his video shows them opening his mailbox.” The problem is hardly limited to Florida. In April, a New York man pleaded guilty to working as part of a group that stole more than $550,000 worth of checks from mailboxes across several New Jersey counties and Connecticut, per NJ.com. Just this month, police in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, warned residents that someone in the area was stealing mail from home mailboxes, local NBC-affiliate WBRE reported. “Whoever is doing it is taking mail from the mailboxes looking for checks and when they find checks they are whitewashing them signing them out to a bogus account and depositing them electronically,” Sgt. Scott Rozitski from the Wright Township Police told the news outlet. “They are using some kind of liquid and what it does is takes regular ink off checks but not the check ink. The check ink is still intact. The ink that’s written is taken off and once they dry that out, they can write on the checks.” It’s not just anecdotal either. An audit report from the USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that from March 2020 through Feb. 2021, the USPS Inspection Service (USPSIS) received nearly 300,000 complaints about mail theft, which was a staggering 161 percent increase from the amount of complaints during the same time period a year prior. “Mail theft is a growing problem. It’s at epidemic proportions right now,” Postal Police Officer Association President Frank Albergo told CBS-affiliate WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. According to Albergo, one of the major issues is that the USPS police force is not being utilized properly, dwindling down now to just a third of what the force was in 2019.
