2 El Monte Men Arrested in Probe of Postal Robberies

Two El Monte men believed to be responsible for a number of postal robberies in the San Fernando Valley were in custody Tuesday after being snared in a two-month Sheriff’s Department investigation, authorities said.

The investigation started in East Los Angeles, where Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department investigators teamed up with postal inspectors to crack down on robberies of both postal carriers and postal trucks, crimes which have been plaguing the Los Angeles area for more than a year.

Postal inspectors recently tipped sheriff’s investigators to one postal robber in the Valley, and investigators tailed him and an accomplice Monday morning until they caught them in the act, Sgt. John Shupe said.

About 10 a.m., the robbers drove up to a postal truck parked in the 7200 block of Gaynor Avenue in Van Nuys, Shupe said. The passenger jumped out, broke the driver’s side window with a spark plug, and grabbed sacks holding 200 to 300 pieces of mail, Shupe said.

But deputies watching from nearby then pounced and arrested the men, identified as Ricardo Morales, 24, and Augustine Sanchez, 31, who were booked at the Temple station on suspicion of theft of U.S. mail, Shupe said.

Shupe said the two are suspected of numerous robberies in the Valley, from Chatsworth to Van Nuys. He said they would comb through the stolen mail, searching for government checks, then obtain fake IDs in the names of the payees and cash them.

Half of the postal robberies in the United States last year occurred in the greater Los Angeles region. On “check day”--the first of the month, when government checks arrive in the mail--robberies have become so common that delivery has been canceled in certain blocks where postal carriers are frequently victimized.

“There are a lot of people out there doing it,” Shupe said of postal robbery. The two suspects in custody “are just a couple of small fish in a great big sea.”