A tip about a suspicious pattern of missing mail led Sunnyvale investigators to two suspects accused of raiding more than 40 community mailboxes across six Bay Area cities, recovering over 100 pieces of stolen mail from one suspect’s home and more than 80 pounds of it from the other’s residences. Both suspects, one of whom was on parole, were booked into Santa Clara County Jail after searches conducted this month turned up stolen USPS mailbox locks, burglary tools, suspected methamphetamine, and a device investigators say let thieves open mailboxes while leaving them looking untouched.
According to the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, the case began last month when a department community services officer recognized a recently reported mail theft as consistent with a broader trend and alerted the agency’s General Crimes Unit. That unit had already received an information flier from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service describing a wave of community mailbox thefts, and investigators soon identified a primary suspect and his vehicle. Detectives say the suspect was seen breaking into community mailboxes in San Jose, with a female accomplice, also on parole, seen assisting him.
The stolen mail recovered from the two suspects’ residences was connected to addresses throughout Sunnyvale, San Jose, Mountain View, Menlo Park, Sausalito, and Oakland, per the department’s account. Affected locations included large apartment and condominium complexes with centralized mailboxes, which the department says left numerous victims in their wake. Stolen items recovered included checks, credit cards, and personal identifying information, the kind of haul that fuels identity theft long after a mailbox is emptied…