WEST HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — Police are getting more and more complaints about thieves stealing checks from mailboxes. West Hartford is the latest town warning residents about “check washing.” Scammers can empty your bank account before you even know something is wrong.
You think when you drop a check in the mailbox, it will arrive safely. But in West Hartford, people are finding they keep disappearing as part of a “check washing” scam.
“People take big checks and change the amount on it and stuff,” a West Hartford resident named Sarah, who did not want to give her last name, said.
The thieves also change to whom the check is made out. That is what police have heard again and again. They have even seen thieves at work at this post office.
“They had actually been using a string with a sticky substance on the end of it to retrieve mail from inside the post office box,” Capt. Eric Rocheleau, public information officer of the West Hartford Police Department said.
For just that reason, the U.S. Postal Service is phasing out the boxes with the big, fold-down doors, the kind you could fit a string down and fish out an envelope. Instead, they are using new boxes with much smaller openings you cannot fit anything inside. It makes police wonder if some of the thefts come from residential mailboxes, like the ones at the ends of driveways.
However they get the checks, the crooks then go to work changing them.
“They do use a chemical…
