The Anchorage Police Department has received numerous reports of mail thefts from unsecured single-home mailboxes this week. Items stolen included checks, medications, and gift cards.
Michelle Tabler with the Better Business Bureau advised that people should take any outgoing mail with valuables or personal information directly to the post office, especially around the holidays.
Tabler: ” A lot of people still have the old mailboxes that they put their outgoing mail and they put the red flag up. Well that is a red flag to scammers and to thieves, they go by and take stuff out of there.”
The thefts only occurred at those unsecured mailboxes, not locked community boxes according to the police department.
APD spokeswoman Jennifer Castro says one report showed a “citizen stated that they had put their mail in the mailbox earlier that morning with the red tag up and found that the mail was missing before the postal service worker had arrived to pick it up”.
There are still no suspects in the Anchorage thefts and no estimate of the cost of mail stolen according the Castro.