Stolen Christmas

The Christmas season brings many happy childhood memories. One of those was the mailbox, which was often filled with greeting cards from friends and relatives. As a kid, it was a special treat to receive a card from our distant grandmother or the uncle we never met, and finding a $5 bill inside, or a gift certificate. Here’s a holiday season warning about how you send gifts, cash and valuables to loved ones or business contacts.

I spoke with Mandy (not her real name), a Lyft passenger who works at the USPS in Commerce City. She said a few interesting things. Usually, her shift runs from 10 pm to 6 am. She said they usually finish sorting the mail in two hours. At Christmas season “It’s starting to get busy now, but where is all the Christmas mail?” she said they are busy through most of the night.

Theft. She said they had a guy and she watched him open colored card envelopes and take the contents. He used to bring his big backpack onto the floor with him and fake like he was grabbing a snack and drop stolen goods and money into the pack. She called it to the attention of her supervisors, who said, “We know. We’re watching him, too.” But they had to “build a case.” She said it took months. Sandy confronted him directly and told him about a previous employee who was stealing gift cards from the mail and she was fired. The she-thief moved out of town where she though she could get away with spending the gift cards. They were tracked and charges were brought against her. It did not dissuade the alleged thief.

Eventually, she said, law enforcement came in and removed him. He was tracked while trying to cash in on gift cards. But his apprehension came only after she witnessed him stealing from hundreds of people who were supposed to be recipients of gifts and cash.

U.S. Postal Service deliveries are protected under statute

18 U.S. Code § 1708 – Theft or receipt of stolen mail matter  

The code states, in part, “Whoever buys, receives, or conceals, or unlawfully has in his possession, any letter, postal card, package, bag, or mail, or any article or thing contained therein, which has been so stolen, taken, embezzled, or abstracted, as herein described, knowing the same to have been stolen, taken, embezzled, or abstracted — shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”

The Fedweek.com article by Frank Albergo of the Postal Police Officers Association on Dec. 11, 2025 article that mail theft has become a national crisis. In 2024, more than 58 million packages were stolen from the USPS amounting to a loss of $5 to $16 billion.

Just a week ago, a chance find in a garbage can led to the foiling of a $640,000 credit card theft ring allegedly orchestrated by USPS employees near Miami, Florida.

The USPS handles transactions that fuel the U.S. economy to the tune of $93 trillion. That’s trillion with a “t”. The USPS has its own Postal Inspection Service. The USPIS and the USPS Office of the Inspector General rely heavily on credit card companies and retail merchants to estimate theft rates because its own research data is “fragmented and incomplete,” asserts Albergo.

The USPIS set up its own Mail Theft Analytics Program (MTAP) in an effort to curb attacks on postal carriers and mailbox larceny. MTAP has been largely ineffective, and since 2021 has investigated just one percent of all theft.

Albergo writes, “The USPS OIG and the Government Accountability Office have confirmed that the Inspection Service has no staffing benchmarks, no operational model for prevention, and no method to evaluate where its law enforcement resources are most needed.”

So be wary as you send packages and gifts through the mail. If it’s valuable, purchase the insurance. Or use a different delivery service.