More Long Islanders are coming forward to say their mail was stolen and their checks were cashed by criminals, a crime that is steadily eroding trust in the Postal Service. The familiar reassurance that the check is in the mail no longer carries the same comfort, as residents question whether it is still safe to drop checks into a mailbox at all. For some, the answer is now probably not.
Among those affected is Carolyn Borella, who owns Borella Wholesale Nursery in Nesconset. She had sent checks to a supplier from an outdoor mailbox at the Nesconset Post Office, using the mail the way countless people and small businesses do every day. It was a routine errand that ended up costing her business thousands of dollars.
According to her account, the letters were intercepted and the checks were cashed by someone else for about $16,000. Instead of reaching her supplier, the payments were diverted by criminals who managed to turn her mailed checks into cash. The loss left her grappling with how easily money she had worked for was taken.
What makes the case especially troubling is that she had tried to guard against exactly this kind of fraud. Borella said she even used a special security pen to prevent tampering, yet the criminals still managed to change the name on the check. The fact that a basic precaution did not stop them deepened her sense of vulnerability.
Her frustration has turned into a wider mistrust of how to safely send mail. I'm fed up, she said, wondering aloud whether she now has to hand letters directly to a person inside the post office. As she put it, you can't leave it in your own mailbox because you never know who is going to pass by and take it, and you can't leave it in front of the post office because someone steals it at night.
The problem extends well beyond a single victim. Local officials have issued warnings about using outdoor mailboxes, and video has captured people fishing for mail, pulling letters out of collection boxes in search of checks and personal information. Those behind the thefts, as one resident put it, are walking away scot-free with money that people worked hard for their whole lives.
The scale of the problem is reflected in national figures. According to the most recently available statistics, the Postal Service received around 20,000 complaints of mail theft every year. For Long Islanders who still rely on the mail to pay suppliers and bills, the warnings and the numbers add up to a simple, unsettling question about whether the mailbox can still be trusted with their checks.