Postal

For years I resisted signing up for online banking. I liked to pay my bills the old-fashioned way, in person or by mail. The bank that holds my mortgage is only two blocks from my home, I simply walked there, check in hand, once a month. The post office is on the same block as that bank. The blue mailbox in front of it has a slot that’s so narrow nobody could possibly reach into it, so I assumed it was safe.

Not anymore.

A few weeks ago, I slipped a magazine subscription renewal into that slot. Shortly after, a notice came from the credit union where I had an account:  A check for $15,000 had bounced and I was being charged an overdraft fee. How weird an error for the credit union  to make, I thought.  I didn’t have nearly that much money in that account, and I most certainly hadn’t written such a  check.

In my records, I saw that the rejected check had the same number as the one for $79.99 for the magazine subscription, which I had mailed. Somehow, after I dropped it into the mailbox, somebody had stolen it, rewritten it, and tried to cash it. How was that possible?

I called the credit union, where I had my checking account, reached a live human being who immediately refunded the overdraft  fee  but was not able to tell me wanted to tell me where my check had gone astray or how the thief had tried to tap my account with the falsified  check. Was the credit union investigating?

“That’s up to law enforcement,” I was told. “We just try as hard as we can to get the money back .”

Then I went to my neighborhood  post office.

“That’s been happening fairly frequently,” a  woman behind the counter informed me.  Someone has the master key, she said;  the same key opens all the USPS mailboxes in the city.

“And what are you doing about that?”

She had told the postal inspector more than once, she answered. She herself has no authority to do anything. She’s been telling people to bring their mail inside instead of dropping it into the blue box on the sidewalk.

Amazing! The post office knows about the thefts, they  know someone has the master key to the official mailboxes, the thefts keep happening, yet people keep slipping envelopes with checks into that half-inch slot, having no idea.

I wrote a note and pasted it under the slot. “Don’t put your mail here, take it inside. Someone has the key and has been stealing checks.”

The next morning, my note was gone. The slot remained open.

I have since heard of five similar incidents in the neighborhood.  I Apparently there is a way to wash checks and rewrite them well enough so they could be cashed.

This experience unnerved me. The post office can no longer be trusted.

Photo by Saravitale / Dreamstime (Image ID 538310), edited.