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Crime Apple

Woman Mailed Herself an Apple AirTag To Help Catch Mail Thieves (cnn.com) 103

Several items were stolen from a woman's P.O. box. So she mailed herself a package containing an Apple AirTag, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's office: Her mail was again stolen on Monday morning, including the package with the AirTag that she was able to track.

It is important to note that the victim did not attempt to contact the suspects on her own... The Sheriff's Office would like to commend the victim for her proactive solution, while highlighting that she also exercised appropriate caution by contacting law enforcement to safely and successfully apprehend the suspects.

CNN reports on what the authorities found: The suspected thieves were located in nearby Santa Maria, California, with the victim's mail — including the package containing the AirTag — and other items authorities believe were stolen from more than a dozen victims, according to the sheriff's office. Virginia Franchessca Lara, 27, and Donald Ashton Terry, 37, were arrested in connection with the crime, authorities said.

Lara was booked on felonies including possession of checks with intent to commit fraud, fictitious checks, identity theft, credit card theft and conspiracy, and remains held on a $50,000 bail as of Thursday, jail records show. Terry faces felony charges including burglary, possession of checks with intent to commit fraud, credit card theft, identity theft and conspiracy and was held on a $460,000 bail, according to jail records...

Authorities said they're working on contacting other victims of theft in this case.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Woman Mailed Herself an Apple AirTag To Help Catch Mail Thieves

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  • That woman and her solution? She's my new hero!
  • by crow ( 16139 ) on Saturday August 31, 2024 @10:11AM (#64751150) Homepage Journal

    It seems really stupid that a private individual needs to do this. You would think if someone reports that they're getting their mail consistently stolen, the postal inspector would do the same thing. That's the real story here: Postal Inspector Fails to Investigate Mail Theft.

    • by schwit1 ( 797399 )

      Typical government attitude. There's little motivation when you can't be fired for not doing your job.

      • The alternative is a government where you get hired because of who you know, or to whom you're related - or, worse, political affiliation - so it's just a Tamany Hall situation. When you come up with a perfect system, share it with us.
        • That system was better. Endless War and Covert Assassinations wasn't a thing.

          You need a permanent government of the Professional Managerial Class to support that.

          We don't need perfect to disassemble what's clearly broken and dangerous.

          These same people say they're going for a Nuclear War in 2025 and you should get your affairs in order.

          Annie Jacobsen's book is essential reading.

      • Because they don't have enough budget to investigate literally everything. Everyone is pressured to do more with less, this is not just for the corporate world but it's in government too.

        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          The Postal Inspectors Service has a total of 2,400 employees, of which about 500 are inspectors, to cover the entire country. I don't think they've got quite enough personnel to be staking out mailboxes.

    • You would think if someone reports that they're getting their mail consistently stolen, the postal inspector would do the same thing.

      Perhaps they will now that someone has come up with the idea and shown them how easy and effective it is.

    • The article doesn't mention that she ever contacted anyone about the theft, and only called the sheriff's department when the AirTag showed up at some house.
    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      You want the Postal Inspectors to stop residential mail theft? Tell your congresscritter to fund it for an extreme expansion, because there aren't enough of them now.

      https://facts.usps.com/inspect... [usps.com]

      Enforcing the law. Established Aug. 7, 1775. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service enforces federal laws, prevents crimes and keeps customers, employees and the mail safe.

      It’s one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the nation. Postal Inspectors remain on the heels of the criminals — targeting th

      • Interesting info.
        But 2400 employees for how many towns and villages and cities in the USA? Sounds a little bit understaffed.

  • Not explained is how these two were able to pilfer the contents of all those "secure" PO boxes. I can only assume that one or both of them worked (or contracted) for the Post Office. Or they have a friend on the inside, but that seems less likely, given the petty nature of this crime spree.

    • Re:Locked boxes? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Known Nutter ( 988758 ) on Saturday August 31, 2024 @11:13AM (#64751274)
      It's very simple. Postal workers are robbed for their keys.

      https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
    • The "master" delivery keys are all the same or infrequently vary.

      Security by obscurity. Until it wasn't.

    • It's rather poor journalism for the article to make no mention of whether either of them worked for the post office. I'm not sure that's because the writer is an idiot that didn't think of the obvious question or if they were urged by someone in power to omit the answer from the article.

      However, it's far from a forgone conclusion that the theft must have been done by a postal worker. See this Lock Picking Lawyer video for evidence of exactly how easy it is to open somebody else's PO Box https://youtu.be/KUa [youtu.be]

      • See this Lock Picking Lawyer video for evidence of exactly how easy it is to open somebody else's PO Box https://youtu.be/KUau7vVa5pQ?s... [youtu.be]

        Lots of love for LPL, but his video shows picking a lock for clustered mailboxes, not for PO boxes, which are located inside a post office. The summary says the thefts were occurring from a PO box.

        • Lots of love for LPL, but his video shows picking a lock for clustered mailboxes, not for PO boxes, which are located inside a post office. The summary says the thefts were occurring from a PO box.

          I'm aware of that, but I'm not sure I follow your logic. Are you saying that the post office legally requires clustered mailboxes to use a lock that can be easily raked open in seconds without even picking but uses high security unpickable locks inside the post office? If they have those high security locks in the post office, why do they legally required clustered mailboxes to use the totally insecure ones?

          My guess is that the locks in the post office are just as weak and easy to open as the ones that the

          • by Nonesuch ( 90847 )

            Stealing from apartment-style "cluster mailboxes" is much more lucrative as you only need to get past one lock (or steal a master "arrow" key) and you have access to all the mail and packages in the cluster.

            The PO Boxes inside a post office are each keyed uniquely and do not have a master key. It is much more difficult & risky to gain access to the backside to loot the boxes en masse, as that is within the "secure" side of the post office. You'd pretty much have to be a USPS employee to successfully

      • But it's about Air Tags! So it must be great.

    • We had our postal boxes in a condo complex replaced a few years back, because someone came with a crowbar and pried the back open. The new ones have steel instead of aluminum, and are embedded firmly in the concrete (some places have had the entire boxes taken). A friend who was an HOA president reported that even in an indoors mail pickup area, with cameras, someone broke them open in the middle of the night.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      It's not hard to learn to pick locks, I learned to do it in an afternoon. There are plenty of videos on YouTube as to how to do it.

  • Wow, I am amazed the police actually showed up at the AirTag location and arrested the thieves.

    Usually California police just ignore complaints about property crimes a police officer didn't personally witness.

    Per the article it was the Santa Barbara County sheriff's office that did it. Maybe the sheriff is better than local (city) police. Anyway, kudos to the sheriff's office for doing their job. Unusual in California and so worthy of praise.

    • Santa Barbara sheriffs have a certain reputation.

      At a certain level of wealth they're more like a private protection agency and less like State goons who just follow orders.

      • A sheriff is rarely a goon for the state.

        He was elected. Its police officers that you are thinking of.

        The primary sheriff duty is court-ordered eviction. Removing people from property.
        The primary police office duty is writing motor vehicle tickets. Removing property from people.
    • No, this is not California, don't listen to the Fox News propaganda. It was a rule in some cities, not all or even most, to focus on property crimes above a certain value. California governor just last week signed a law to crack down on retail theft.

      Also, stealing mail is a FEDERAL crime, not just state or municipal.

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        In our area at least the issue wasn't police not paying attention to misdemeanor theft, it was that the District Attorneys wouldn't bother prosecuting non-felony theft because they didn't have time or personnel to do it. I was working on a computer near the front desk in the Tacoma PD headquarters and overheard a person telling the cop at the desk that he could see his stolen bicycle in his neighbors yard. The cop told him that they wouldn't be dispatching anyone if it wasn't worth more than $1000 and sai

    • by Sloppy ( 14984 )

      The surprise here is that I would have thought it would be feds, not sheriffs or staties or municipal cops. Anyone know why it wasn't the feds?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Per the article it was the Santa Barbara County sheriff's office

      County sheriff is an elected office. So they are answerable to the voters. At some point, this will be changed when some liberal cities complain. It will be made an appointed position, under their authority (like King County with Seattle) so enforcement priorities can be adjusted to make life comfortable for the homeless, fentanyl users and mail thieves.

  • How many police agencies didn't think of this first? All of them.

  • People's names (and mugshots) shouldn't be published until after a conviction. Same as asset forfeiture shouldn't happen before a conviction. Because a whole lotta innocent people people are falsely arrested by cops, and their names will turn up on Google searches when seeking employment, housing or loans.

    Directly related example, cops used Find my iPhone data to break into the wrong house and eventually their insurance had to pay out $3.8 million in compensation, but if arrested their names would have been

    • Directly related example, cops used Find my iPhone data to break into the wrong house

      Cops don't understand how the tech works. The BlueTooth tag has no location knowledge. It reports its presence to the nearest avaible iPhone. Which reports _its_ location. So if there's a tracker in your next door neighbor's house, your phone will get your door kicked in.

  • This is very clear. We need to switch to punishment from the legal system. Start with a good caning.
  • like playing whack-a-mole. You need to actually get to the root of the problem. Nobody steals mail for a living because they want to. And bad check writers always get caught sooner or later.
    • Nobody steals mail for a living because they want to.

      Because they don't want to work. It's time for socialism now!

      Where these kinds of people get sent to the gulag. And nobody cares what they want or don't want.

    • Nobody steals mail for a living because they want to.

      Have suffered brain damage recently? Of course they want to steal mail. That's how they make a living. This has squat all to do with anything else. This is straight up criminals being criminals.

    • The root of the problem is greed. No matter how easy modern day life is, people see someone else with more, and they want it. It doesn't matter how evenly you spread the wealth (if you could even do that without destroying the incentives that create it), you wouldn't get rid of the jealousy and greed that causes people to cheat and steal (or causes socialists to want to steal the hard earned wealth of others through government force).
  • What do women need to do to get equal treatment? Fucking patriarchy.

  • Some years back, I talked to the local police about the mail thefts that were happening. How come local police are working on it, when it's a federal crime and it is the bailiwick of the postal inspectors. The answer: we can't get the postal inspectors to care to pursue anything.

    It's also sort of funny that California law prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with the Feds when it comes to immigration, but the for some reason no one remembers about that law when it comes to mail theft or bank r

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      It's also sort of funny

      Not really. There are not enough people to process illegal immigrants, and it's not the job of the police. Having illegals them in fear of the local police creates an underclass who have no protection from the law which creates a really, really nasty criminal class that exploits them. That has all sorts of knock-on problems.

      If nothing else it is very sound financial sense for the California police to turn a blind eye. Something you'd think conservatives would appreciate...

      • I'm not sure how we got on illegal alien criminals from the Post Office thefts, but...

        It's also sort of funny that California law prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with the Feds when it comes to immigration,

        Not really. There are not enough people to process illegal immigrants, and it's not the job of the police. Having illegals them in fear of the local police creates an underclass

        Your statement that it's not the job of the police to enforce immigration law makes me think you don't understand what that means or what is actually going on. I'll give you an example.

        I live in Fairfax County, the main suburb of Washington D.C. where all the federal workers and contractors live. A very rich county, super liberal.The county government declared some years back that we are a "Sancturary County". What does t

        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          Six month suspended sentence? That's not a problem with the sheriff, that's a problem with the judge. I'd recommend checking his browser history.

          • by cstacy ( 534252 )

            Six month suspended sentence? That's not a problem with the sheriff, that's a problem with the judge. I'd recommend checking his browser history.

            The judge was problem #1, but we're talking hear about the police. The feds told them to hold the guy because he was a dangerous multiple-offender criminal who was in the country illegally. The police obeyed the County edict that the police "will not cooperate with" and "will not honor any legal orders from" or "enforce any federal law" when they happen to have an "undocumented" "immigrant" in custody.

            They made sure to release him before ICE showed up to fetch him.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      There are a total of 500 postal inspectors for the whole country, and you think they should be devoting one of them to stake out your mailbox? Really?

  • Why does one suspect get your $50K bail and the other gets $460K bail. Are partners in crime not equal flight risks? Are partners in crime not equally able or unable to post bail? Or, is it just that one is female and the other is male?

  • In most of the world parcel delivery services hand parcels to whoever answers the door, or they post a card that allows people to arrange later delivery or to pick the parcel up from a depot. The rampant theft of US parcels is caused by the peculiar system of discarding parcels outside delivery addresses.

    If you want parcels to not get stolen actually deliver them, like they do in every other country.

  • by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Saturday August 31, 2024 @06:50PM (#64752192)

    I live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and have a household mailing address and also a USPS PO Box. I haven't had anything stolen from the PO Box, but I have had a number of things stolen *by* the USPS employees in the regular mail. I am talking about small packages containing electronics, fairly expensive.

    You can watch on the USPS tracking web site as the package is picked up, all the intermediate stations along the way, when it gets to your local USPS office, when the postman picked it up and put it in a truck, and when they put it on your doorstep.

    What happens is that the parcel gets to the final post office, and is in the "waiting for the postman to pick it up and go to your house" state. The parcel never leaves that state, is never picked up, and after a little while vanishes from the system.

    This is because post office workers steal the parcel while it is in their office, before the postman gets it. (Or perhaps the postman steals it by somehow circumventing the tracking scanner.)

    I have filed the USPS paperwork with the Postal Inspector, and the I.G. when these parcels are obviously stolen. This goes into a black hole no matter what papers you file or what telephone calls you make. There is no resolution, no response at all.

    If you contact the police, they are not interested at all; they tell you to file the forms, it's the USPS's problem.

    I get plenty of mail each week. Only expensive parcels are ever stolen by the USPS workers. The U.S. Mail is not a reliable way to send a package. The place is infested with thieves.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      That's going to be an issue with your local post office then, I've never heard of this anywhere else.

  • For a split second I thought she had mailed herself to track down the thieves.
  • It is important to note that the victim did not attempt to contact the suspects on her own... The Sheriff's Office would like to commend the victim for her proactive solution, while highlighting that she also exercised appropriate caution by contacting law enforcement to safely and successfully apprehend the suspects.

    I would like to commend the Sheriff's Office for actually doing something about it. Lots of them refuse to do so even when presented with the evidence of the location of the stolen items. But I do not approve of their passive-aggressive "good thing she came to us" language when so many SOs do not respond, it is extremely tone deaf and victim-blaming.

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