DULUTH, Ga. — A growing check-washing scheme is costing Duluth residents tens of thousands of dollars, and police say thieves are grabbing the mail between the post office counter and the sorting facility.
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Former state lawmaker Brooks Coleman and his wife, Mary Claire, learned that last year when a single check they mailed turned into a $20,000 loss.
“It’s very frustrating and very time-consuming,” Coleman said.
Mary Claire Coleman said she chose to mail the payment because she believed it was the safer option.
“I didn’t do it electronically because then you hear other stories about how much is stolen off of the internet,” she said. “So, I was trying to protect us from that.”
The problem has only deepened.
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The Duluth Police Department logged seven of these cases in June alone, with losses topping $100,000.
One business lost a $23,000 check. Another man was mailing nearly $50,000 in retirement savings when a stranger cashed it instead, according to police.
Duluth Sgt. Ted Sadowski said the checks disappear between the wall deposit slot at the McClure Bridge Road post office and the sorting facility, then get rewritten in someone else’s name.
“They’re not going to use their correct identification,” Sadowski said. “They’re going to have a fake ID, typically. So it makes our investigation that much harder.”
Because mail theft is a federal crime, local officers hand the cases to postal inspectors. Sadowski said the safest move is to keep checks out of the mail.
“Try to avoid sending checks through the mail,” he said. “Try to figure out some other way of sending that money.”
Requests for comment from the Office of Inspector General were not returned.
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