Anyone stamp out these mail thieves!
Scooter-riding sleazeballs have been shamelessly stealing letters from a Greenwich Village mailbox in the course of the vacation season’s postal paradise.
Surveillance footage obtained by The Put up exhibits the not-so-merry mooches trip up on mopeds or scooters to the mailbox at College Place and East Ninth Road and rifle via it on 4 completely different latest mornings.
The thefts coincided with a spate of fishy checks being cashed within the space close to Washington Sq. Park – together with from one native resident who despatched a $150 test via the mailbox, solely to find it had been modified to $1,950 and cashed, police mentioned.
“It’s not truthful. Individuals work arduous for his or her cash. The quantity of mail they’ve taken is insane,” mentioned Jay Miranda, the property resident supervisor at a close-by constructing.
The rash of mailbox marauding started in late August, when tenants in his constructing seen checks they despatched via the mailbox had been fraudulently modified, Miranda mentioned.
“Let’s say the test was for $100, it was modified to $1,000. They misplaced cash,” he mentioned.
Movies from outdoors the constructing confirmed a constant sample: a lowlife using up and blithely parking a scooter or a moped on the sidewalk in the course of the early morning hours earlier than overtly reaching into the mailbox.
Generally, the crooks would shine a flashlight as they sifted via the mailbox. One masked thief seems to be sporting supply employee garb, right down to a boxy backpack and reflective stripes.
One other exhibits a moon-faced mope using a scooter as much as the mailbox, nervously fidgeting via it earlier than taking — and oafishly dropping — some kind of parcel.
The movies had been all taken between roughly 1:20 a.m. and a couple of:15 a.m. on Nov. 24, Nov. 25, Dec. 2 and Dec. 8.
Miranda mentioned he despatched movies to the native US Postal Service postmaster, however hadn’t heard again.
He mentioned NYPD cops advised him they will’t do something as a result of the mailbox is “authorities property.”
“I’ve reported it a number of instances, however nothing has been accomplished,” he mentioned.
However cops have been investigating a number of latest test frauds within the space, with no less than one unfolding proper after the primary theft depicted on video.
A 69-year-old man mailed a $150 test on Nov. 23, police mentioned — roughly six hours earlier than video exhibits the moon-faced klutz bumbling via the mailbox.
Fed-up locals complained that it’s been occurring for years.
Isha Matko, 55, a cashier at a close-by Gristedes grocery store, mentioned she used to mail her hire checks from that very mailbox till a number of years in the past – when she found they had been being stolen.
“It’s nonetheless occurring?” she mentioned angrily as she watched one of many latest movies. “One thing must be accomplished to allow them to’t pull it out.”
The mailbox has been such a magnet for thieves that different locals, reminiscent of Todd Benedetto, 48, additionally mentioned they keep away from utilizing it altogether.
Benedetto mentioned the mailbox — which may be very near his household’s enterprise, A Uno, a clothes and jewellery retailer — as soon as felt mysteriously sticky.
“I mentioned to myself, ‘Possibly they’re attempting to not make the mail go down,’ not realizing they had been stealing from it,” he mentioned.
The thieves ended up snatching and cashing a $1,000 test Benedetto put within the mailbox a few 12 months in the past, he mentioned.
Getting a refund was such a trouble that Benedetto ended up consuming the price — and vowing by no means to make use of the mailbox once more.
“I’m going the publish workplace. It’s a pair blocks away,” he mentioned. “It’s good to have that type of factor there on the nook nevertheless it’s not a pleasant factor.”
One among Miranda’s fellow resident managers mentioned he tells individuals in his constructing to not use the mailbox.
“I don’t know why that field remains to be there,” he mentioned. “Individuals in my constructing have complained about it, I believe, since round COVID.”
Representatives with the US Postal Service’s postal inspectors didn’t return a request for remark.
Matko mentioned the culprits who stole her hire cash from the mailbox have to lastly be caught, particularly in the course of the vacation season.
“It’s Christmas time, individuals are sending present playing cards, cash to a grandmother or regardless of the case could also be,” she mentioned.
— Extra reporting by Jennifer Bain and Kevin Sheehan
