Four young men – three of them Hispanic – were arrested red-handed on suspicion of stealing mail from a Postal Service (USPS) mailbox in Lenox Hill (Manhattan, NYC), a federal crime that has skyrocketed in the Upper East Side, according to police .
NYPD officers arrested Freddy Flores (19), Issaiah McConon (26), Leslie Perez (21) and Carlos Garcia (22) on Tuesday, who were charged with criminal possession of stolen property. They are all residents of the Bronx, he said. patch.com.
That day officers from the 19th Precinct noticed a group of people removing mail from a drop box at East 64th Street and Third Avenue. Upon reviewing them, they allegedly found several personal checks that were taken from envelopes addressed to other people.
Flores and Garcia were also charged with grand theft. Garcia also received a third charge for possession of burglary tools. According to 19th Precinct NYPD Captain Anthony Lavino, the crime called “check laundering” is when thieves can change the name of the payee on a check.
NYPD has been calling attention to mailbox theft since the fall. In September, in that same area, they arrested a pair of mail thieves who had more than $84,000 in stolen checks in their car.
In October NBCNews reported that the Upper East Side had more than 100 mail thefts so far in 2022. That same month, Alberto Pino was indicted by a grand jury for stealing more than $78,000 in Treasury Department checks that he was responsible for delivering. while working as a USPS mail carrier in Westchester (NY).
Days earlier, three USPS employees and one other person were arrested in connection with a multi-year, $1.3 million identity theft and fraud scheme in the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area.
Previously, in August, three Hispanic mail carriers were arrested on suspicion of committing million-dollar mail fraud, after a large quantity of mail was found abandoned in a hotel room in Yonkers (NY).
Since 2019, the 5,000 mailboxes that exist throughout the five NYC boroughs have been progressively replaced. And while their traditional color and shape remained, they are theoretically much less vulnerable to mail thieves because the wide slot has been replaced by a narrower one.
All charges are mere accusations and those charged are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court.
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