CHARLOTTE — Channel 9 has reported on a number of instances during the last 12 months of robbers attacking postal staff whereas they have been delivering mail. Most — if not all — of those hold-ups occurred in broad daylight.

The criminals are focusing on letter carriers’ keys, referred to as “arrow keys,” to allow them to go round, open large blue mailboxes in addition to cluster ones in neighborhoods and condominium complexes, and steal mail, cash, and identities.

In one case final 12 months, officers say a robber held up a letter service on Music Hall Way in SouthEnd, put a gun to her face, and stole her arrow key. Investigators supplied a reward and ended up arresting Kyree Corbett. They say he and accomplices spent months serving to themselves to mailboxes and virtually $2 million in checks.

A couple of months in the past, Fort Mill police say a person stole an arrow key and broke into mailboxes on the publish workplace on Tom Hall Street. At final examine this month, there was nonetheless no arrest within the case.

And in one other case, federal prosecutors say somebody held up a postal employee at gunpoint in 2020 and that Terrell Freeman — and two different individuals — used the stolen key to open mailboxes throughout the Charlotte space for nearly a 12 months and stole 86 checks value $3 million. All three have been sentenced to a number of years behind bars.

Investigators say a few of these checks belonged to Piedmont Stairworks, a northwest Charlotte enterprise that makes staircases for properties.

Jim McGee owns the corporate and says the thieves stole about 25 checks value greater than $138,000.

“That’s pretty significant,” he instructed Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke. “For a small business, right, to have that much money disappear … that was a big deal to us.”

McGee’s crew had a large number to kind out. “It was a lot of time. A lot of phone calls,” he mentioned.

McGee says Piedmont Stairworks modified the way it does enterprise. “You should be able to write a check, sign it, put it in an envelope, and mail it and not think about it again. But now there’s eight other steps that have to happen after that … after you decide to pay somebody,” he mentioned. “We don’t do any hard checks anymore. There are zero hard checks. We have to pay a third-party to cut all our checks so that they’re responsible for it.”

Plus, he says, his enterprise pays for an additional service to confirm the checks which suggests much more money and time.

Action 9 requested the U.S. Postal Inspection Service what number of assaults the Carolinas have had lately. It mentioned 44 from the start of 2019 by means of the primary half of this 12 months, no less than 14 within the Charlotte space.

“It’s a brazen crime,” U.S. Postal Inspector Rick Johnsten mentioned.

He says the Postal Service is engaged on new insurance policies and procedures to forestall assaults on letter carriers, however that it might be arduous to protect all of them on their routes.

“We deliver to 150 million addresses per day. My agency isn’t nearly big enough if we want to investigate also and watch the mail carriers at the same time. So we have to prioritize,” he mentioned.

But the top of the Postal Police Officers Association, Frank Albergo, disagrees.

“In August of 2020, the inspection service released an internal memo which basically … grounded us, it benched us. We were no longer able to protect postal workers, and we were no longer able to do these proactive mail theft prevention patrols. And since then, mail theft has exploded,” he mentioned.

Plus — he says — there was a labor dispute which led to new duties for postal police, principally patrolling postal services, not the streets.

“We also travel from post office to post office, and we will patrol … lobby. But there’s not much crime in postal lobbies,” he mentioned.

So, simply in case your mail will get stolen, maintain an in depth eye in your financial institution accounts, freeze your credit score (in case you haven’t already), and observe these Eight Ways to Protect Yourself:

• Pick up mail rapidly. Don’t depart it within the mailbox a very long time.
• If you’ll be able to’t, use USPS’s maintain service.
• Drop mail in blue packing containers near pickup occasions. [USPS calls them “blue boxes.”]
• Better but, drop off mail contained in the publish workplace straight in case you’re nervous.
• If you’re anticipating cash within the mail and don’t get it, don’t hesitate: inform the sender instantly.
• Don’t mail money.
• If you progress, make sure that everybody essential has your new tackle.
• Use gel pens to put in writing checks. They are arduous to erase, particularly the uni-ball 207. [Yes, uni-ball is all lower case.] You can get them virtually all over the place they usually’re fairly low-cost: nearly $2 every.

Click here for more tips. If you assume somebody stole your mail, report it by clicking here or by calling the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at 877-876-2455.

(WATCH BELOW: Mail service credited with saving aged man’s life in North Carolina)

Mail service credited with saving aged man’s life in North Carolina Joshua Smith seen a Hendersonville man’s mail went untouched for a day, which wasn’t regular for the resident. (NCD)

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