“Beware of sticky slots,” warns Mary Frost, our intrepid neighborhood journalist. Mary reports in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that thieves are using mouse glue traps to steal envelopes from USPS mailboxes around Brooklyn Heights. If you use the mail to send paper checks (do you still use the ledger on the back of the checkbooks too?), you may want to take the envelopes to the post office.
How do the thieves do it? They tie a string to a glue trap and slide it through the “theft-protection” slots to fish out the envelopes. The sticky goo left by the glue traps also prevent the mail from falling to the bottom of the mailboxes. A survey last week found that every mailbox on Henry and Hicks Sts., from Middagh St. to Atlantic Ave., save one, had a stickiness on the slots.
And what do the thieves then do with the checks made out to Verizon or Grandson Billy? According to Mary, they “wash” the checks with common household chemicals to erase Billy’s name and write in theirs, and add a few zeros to the amount to boot. Identity theft is also a possibility. Here is a report from a witness of the crime, posted on Nextdoor.
