DUNWOODY, Ga. — More postal customers are reporting that checks are disappearing from the U.S. mail—checks they’ve sent as well as checks they were expecting to receive; and, according to police, many of the checks were later cashed illegally.
The latest complaints have one detail in common; the disappearing checks all went through one, particular post office—the post office in the City of Dunwoody.
One frustrated post office customer wrote on social media that it’s like a three-alarm fire of mail theft, seemingly centered on the Dunwoody post office, located in the Dunwoody Village shopping plaza.
Amanda McCaskill and her husband agree.
“It’s appalling that nothing has been done about it,” McCaskill said Tuesday.
The McCaskills were expecting a check this past Saturday “that my husband had been waiting for, for weeks.”
The post office sent them visual confirmation, through the “informed delivery” service, that the check was about to be delivered to them along with the rest of their mail that day from the Dunwoody post office.
But when the mail arrived at their home, “We got everything that we were supposed to but the check,” McCaskill said, with no sign of the check since.
Then she said they remembered what they’d been reading on Dunwoody social media sites.
Other postal customers – for weeks, at least—have been warning about checks and gift cards disappearing in the mail, after the envelopes passed in or out of the Dunwoody post office.
On July 27, the Dunwoody Police Department warned on Facebook that the department had received several reports of checks that were mailed at “the outside mailbox at the Dunwoody Village Post Office being altered and cashed...”
There are two, drive-up blue boxes in front of that post office location. How would thieves have been able get into them?
The postal inspector’s office in Atlanta told 11Alive in an email Tuesday night that “our office is investigating vandalism of the collection boxes,” and the investigation is “in the preliminary stage...”
The postal inspector’s office did not comment about complaints that checks that are mailed from elsewhere to Dunwoody have also been disappearing; the postal inspector said those complaints have not yet reached the Inspection Service.
The McCaskills said they and others did file reports of theft with the postal inspector, but have not heard back, yet, with any updates.
In the meantime, “I had to go to FedEx today to mail an insurance check, and pay $30 (instead of 60 cents), because I don’t trust the post office to deliver it,” McCaskill said, adding that her insurance company does not provide for online payments, so she has to mail the monthly premium in the form of a check.
“We’re trying to get the word out to have something done about it," she said, "so that people will feel secure mailing checks or mailing gift cards, and using the United States Postal Service the way it’s intended. I just want to make sure it’s being investigated. And if you can avoid sending through the post office until this gets figured out, I definitely would. Especially if you’re sending something of value, just because I would be worried that it may or may not get there. So just, everybody be careful.”