Now I’ve heard everything.
You already know about most of the high-tech scams being pulled these days. Like the phone call from a person who sounds awfully foreign but claims to be your grandkid in trouble overseas and in need of money.
Or the sweet-voiced people who phone and claim they are from organizations that sound legit and are, say it with me, “in need of money.”
Or the e-mail from the American serviceman in the Middle East who generously wants to share a load of money he found if you give him some cash so he can get the loot into the US.
All are oldies and goodies. I could go on, but why bother? You should know the more sophisticated scams by now.
The scam I’m going to tell you about today is pretty much as low-tech as they get. In fact, it’s no-tech.
Scoundrels are going to post office mailboxes and coating the inner lids with sticky substances so that letters don’t slide fully into the box.
They then snatch the letters and steal the contents, whether they are checks, cash, personal identification or grandma’s birthday card. Using a technique I won’t explain here so I don’t help other criminals-in-waiting, these crooks can erase the name on the checks and substitute their own.
I called the US Postal Service over a three-day span but couldn’t get anyone who was awake in the media office. Nobody got back to me.
So you’ll have to take the word of a reader named Marilyn in Fords, NJ, for this one. “I said to the guy [at the post office], if you know this is ongoing, then close the mailbox,” Marilyn told me over the phone.
Here’s how she explained what she knows of the scam.
“About six months ago, I went to my local post office to mail a letter. I opened the door on the outside mailbox, put the letter in, closed the door and reopened to check if it went down; it did not,” she wrote.
“I picked — or tried to pick [the letter] up — and it was stuck,” she said. “As I pulled the letter up, it had a thick honey-like substance. I then checked the other two boxes and the same thing.”
Marilyn said that she called the phone number that was on a yellow sticker on the box and gave all the details of what had happened.
She said that “two hours later, someone else called back and told me this was call ‘fishing’ and it originated in the Bronx, but they changed their doors and replaced with slots so [the scammers] have moved down into New Jersey,” she wrote.
Marilyn says she’s been sleuthing since then and found another person who had a property tax check of $1,600 stolen from that same box — and the crooks cashed it. The town cops told her this was a federal crime, so she went to the postal police, who gave her a case ID number.
The USPS cop “understood, he knew and said, ‘Thank you very much,’ ” she told me the other day.
Then, Marilyn said, her niece had the same experience with glue on a letter that was returned by the Perth Amboy, NJ, cops.
Marilyn has an e-mail from the USPS thanking her for being so diligent. “First, we want to commend you for taking serious action for what appears to be a potential crime and serious offense,” the USPS wrote to her.
So there you have it: another day, another scam. And the bad guys didn’t even need to hack anyone’s e-mail.
“What about all the people that don’t know about this? And how many mailed bills that never got there?” asked Marilyn.
Let’s see what the post office says when it finally gets back to me.