Nancy Mc Maken said it’s rare she or her husband will drop checks into the outside collection boxes at the post office in Thornton, a south suburb they’ve lived in for 50 years.
Those boxes were broken into at the end of March, and she and at least six other people found that checks they had mailed off were intercepted and altered, with amounts, at least in her case, of more than $10,000.
Reports filed with the Thornton Police Department, acquired by the Daily Southtown through a Freedom of Information Act request, show checks written for $50 or $70 and dropped in the outside collection boxes at the village’s post office were stolen and inflated to several thousands of dollars.
Mc Maken said she was lucky her bank flagged her check, along with two other bogus checks crafted using her account information, as fraudulent, and they were not cashed. But others are dealing with their banks trying to recoup their money.
“I was very fortunate,” Mc Maken said. “My bank was right on top of it.”
Scammers used her account information, based on the mailed check, to not only alter the original check but create two other bogus checks, with the three documents totaling more than $22,600.
Her situation is not unique to patrons of the Thornton post office or other suburban post offices, where checks for relatively small amounts have been mailed, intercepted and “washed” to show much larger amounts.
A Chicago Heights man told the Daily Southtown earlier this year about a $10 check he mailed at that city’s post office that was altered to show a payment of $9,500. He said he spent weeks working with his bank to get the money returned to his account.
Two Thornton residents who had checks stolen when outside collection boxes at the Thornton post office were broken into the weekend of March 26-27 said they are still trying to get thousands of dollars returned to their bank accounts.
They are among at least seven people who filed reports with Thornton police who saw checks mailed, pilfered and altered.
Although it is standard policy for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to notify local police when such mail thefts occur, according to a spokesman, Thornton police say they didn’t learn about the thefts until the first victims filed reports.
Those reports first came in at the end of March and continued until early June, when Mc Maken reported her incident.
Thornton police Chief Glenn Beckman said such notification from the Postal Service might have enabled his department, early on, to alert people who had mailed checks using the collection boxes.
“If we would have known the day or the day after it occurred, maybe we could have put something out and people could have decided on their own what to do,” the chief said.
Reports his department has received have been forwarded to the postal inspection service’s Chicago office, but Beckman said his department is not part of any ongoing investigation.
The postal inspection service told the Daily Southtown in late May its investigators were working with local police, after a Thornton man reported checks he mailed at the post office were altered.
“It seems like we’re taking the reports and referring everything to them,” Beckman said Tuesday.
The collection boxes were removed from the Thornton post office after the March break in, but the U.S. Postal Service said new ones are on their way, although replacements were not outside the post office as of Wednesday.
$50 check altered to nearly $10,000
One Thornton resident who filed a police report said he had written a check March 26 for $50 and deposited it at one of the outside boxes in Thornton.
“We always check our bank account online,” said the man, who asked that his name not be used. “All of a sudden we saw this check for $9,850.”
The check had been cashed, and he filed a police report with Thornton police March 31 and also reported the matter to postal inspectors.
“We have always gone to the drop box or inside the post office (to mail checks) and we even hesitate to do that now,” he said. “I’m not going to be putting checks in the mail for some time.”
The man said he has been told by his bank that it could be several weeks before the money is returned to his account.
“I am keeping my hopes up,” he said.
Another man reported to police April 22 that he mailed two checks March 26 at the Thornton post office using the outside boxes. One of the checks for just under $100 was switched to nearly $10,000 and a second check, for $170, was altered to nearly $10,000, he said. His bank alerted him about the change, though it was not clear from the report whether the checks had been cashed.
Another resident said she dropped off two checks March 27 at the Thornton post office, and they were altered and made payable for amounts of $9,800, but it was not clear from the police report how much the checks had initially been written for or whether they were cashed by her bank.
Mc Maken said she was fortunate the check she wrote and the bogus checks created using her account information were flagged by her bank, Fifth Third.
“We live month-to-month with Social Security,” she said.
According to the police report she filed, the check she had mailed was altered to read $10,700, while scammers created two other checks — one for nearly $10,000 and the other for nearly $2,000.
Still waiting on money
The Daily Southtown became aware of the collection boxes being broken into by another Thornton resident, Jim Berschinski, who mailed off two checks March 25, with both being altered and cashed.
One, a payment for a ComEd utility bill of less than $50, was swiped, altered and cashed for $8,000. Berschinski was able to get the funds returned to his account, but said Wednesday he is still working with Fifth Third on a second altered check.
That check also was written March 25 and mailed that day at the collection boxes outside the Thornton post office. It was for $3.62 for the balance he owed on a medical procedure. It was also intercepted and altered to $8,110 and cashed soon after.
He said he is still working with his bank to get the money back into his account.
“It’s been a real pain,” he said Wednesday.
Banks, including Fifth Third, suggest customers can avoid check fraud, such as check washing, by using online or mobile bill payment methods rather than paying bills by sending a check in the mail.
If paying by check, using a gel pen is advised because the ink does a better job of permeating the fibers on the check, making it more difficult to alter payees and amounts using chemicals and solvents.
Banks and the postal inspection service also recommend dropping checks off inside the post office rather than at neighborhood collection boxes or those outside the post office. Thieves use fishing line or blocks and bottles coated with adhesives to “fish” at night at outside collection points to pull out envelopes, they say.
Mc Maken said she police her people should order new checks only from their bank, rather than through offers that come in the mail about replacement checks with images of puppies and kittens on them.
“They (scammers) can get those and write anything they want” and order new checks, provided they’ve already acquired a person’s bank account information, Mc Maken said she was told.
She said the incident with the fraudulent checks has not left her worried about putting checks in the mail.
“We’ve lived here for 50 years, and I am not skittish about our post office,” Mc Maken said.
mnolan@tribpub.com
