They’re Sleepless in Seattle as Mailboxes Are Pilfered

Thousands of blue street-side mailboxes are being replaced after thieves duplicated the master key and embarked on a months-long check- and credit card-stealing spree.

Postal Service officials have put padlocks on the area’s 3,500 mailboxes as a temporary measure while they install reinforced boxes with high-security locks in Seattle, Tacoma and other nearby cities. The last of the new boxes should be in place by Christmas.

Meanwhile, many people are afraid to drop their letters in the mail. Homemade signs warning of thieves were put on collection boxes in two Seattle neighborhoods.

Seattle Postal Inspector Jim Bordenet said the agency has learned a lesson. From now on, one key won’t open all of the boxes.

The extent of the problem is not yet clear. One man recently convicted of possessing checks he stole from Seattle mailboxes told authorities he was part of a ring of 30 bandits who used the keys to conduct nightly box raids.

Seattle police, who investigate forged-check cases that most often stem from mail theft, said their caseload has skyrocketed from 96 cases last year to about 1,000 so far this year.

Bordenet said the public had repeatedly been made aware of mail-theft problems. But many customers didn’t connect their missing checks and credit cards to the crimes until the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published stories about the problem in October.

Gunnar Johannesson of Seattle wondered why two business checks he dropped in his neighborhood mailbox were never cashed. Then, in September, a neighbor “saw a guy open a mailbox, take the mail out and put it in a canvas bag,” he said.

Johannesson and the neighbor chased the man, but he and their mail escaped.

Johannesson said he had never heard anything from postal officials until he reported the theft.

Election officials in Washington state, where voters rely heavily on absentee ballots, were so worried that stolen ballots could alter a close race that they urged voters before the Nov. 3 election to avoid curbside blue boxes and go straight to the post office.

Although 1,000 reinforced boxes have already arrived in Seattle, the problem is far from over.

“I’m not using them because if it’s still based on a locking mechanism, why can’t the second lock be picked? I’m not convinced,” said Ellen Porter, business manager at Seattle’s Empty Space Theater, which had 20 checks stolen from a nearby box.

The boxes aren’t the only targets. The stolen master key also opens an estimated 35,000 apartment mailboxes throughout the region--something officials said they will tackle next year after the immediate crisis is solved.