A widely reported story yesterday described how six men were arrested outside the Newtonville Post Office while “mail fishing”
I just learned with this story that “mail fishing” is a thing – i.e. dropping lines with something sticky into a mailbox to pull out the mail.
My biggest question here is “How many mail fishermen does it take to rob a mailbox”? In this case six people were arrested. That sounds like some woefully inefficient “fishermen” if it takes six of them to knock off a single mailbox.
A few months back I mailed a letter at my corner mailbox. I always do that thing where you open the mailbox to make certain your letter went down – makes my husband crazy!!! Anyway my letter didn’t go down. In fact it was stuck to the back of the box. When I looked closer there was something sticky painted on the inside back of the box. I reported it to the Newton Centre Post Office and they sent out the Postal Inspector. I guess this is a thing. Maybe more people need to be reminded that interfering with the mail is a federal crime.
My son mailed a check at our local letterbox back in August. It was fished and cashed on same day. Based on security camera footage at the ATM used, Newton police and Postal inspectors staked out the mailbox and arrested two. The letterbox has been changed from the wide-mouth to a thin slot to deter future such crimes. A claim through my son’s bank to the bank that hosted the ATM used resulted in his money restored to his account.
Per the Newton Patch:
https://patch.com/massachusetts/newton/police-bust-6-say-they-fished-mail-out-newton-usps-mailbox