Police are still searching for a ring of thieves who stole a master key to plunder mailboxes at a Santa Clara condo complex.
Around 3:30 a.m. Aug. 5, video footage shows a masked thief entering the mailroom at Boulevard Condominium complex in Santa Clara, near El Camino Real and Scott Boulevard. Armed with a postal worker’s key, the thief burglarized 130 residents’ mailboxes, absconding with mail ranging from packages to driver’s licenses and debit and credit cards.
Alex Salzmann lives at the complex and sits on the condo’s board of directors. He said the complex’s mail carrier told one of the residents of the theft after the carrier’s supervisor ignored the issue.
“They are just able to, with the turn of a key, open them up,” he said. “If you open 130 boxes, you are expecting to find some leftover mail. It was picked clean.”
Salzmann, who said he has since changed his mailbox to a private one, said the thief having the key is like offering up the mail “on a silver platter.”
Most of the discourse around the post office has been “hijacked,” Salzmann said, focusing on red herrings like electric vehicles or Saturday service.
“That is what is really frustrating when you hear about the USPS; they are talking about efficiency,” he said. “They are not talking about not securing the boxes.”
Uday Chaka, founder and CEO of Sentry AI, the security company for the complex, said police told him they are narrowing in on some suspects.
“It is not just like one guy … I think there is a whole criminal operation,” he said.
Inquiries to the Santa Clara Police Department indicate the crime is still under investigation.
Matthew Norfleet, a postal inspector with the San Francisco Division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, called mail theft a “widespread problem” of which the post office is all too aware.
“Obtaining keys through robberies has dramatically spiked in the last four years or so,” he said.
According to United States Postal Inspection Service information, from 2019 to 2020, mail theft increased 139%.
The post office is exploring a variety of solutions, Norfleet said, including electronic locks, but rolling out such an overhaul will take a long time. Police and postal inspectors advise residents to check their mail daily.
“There are literally millions of mailboxes operating on keys across the country, so it will be a while before electronic locks replace standard keys,” Norfleet said. “If there is no mail in the mailboxes when thieves go to steal the mail, they won’t get any debit cards, checks, credit cards, and they won’t have an incentive to come back.”
Using technology as a deterrent and to gather as much information as possible, Chaka said Sentry AI aims to assist police in making an arrest. His company provides security for several properties across the Bay Area, and it isn’t just Santa Clara that is grappling with mail theft.
“Every property we have talked to has had mail theft. It is so prevalent, to the point that people have even stopped reporting it,” he said.
He said it is the No. 1 issue in security.
The challenge, Chaka said, is that thieves often case areas, making enforcement difficult. His company provides a “unique” technological solution, one that creates redundancies in monitoring, “tackling crime from the ground up” to empower police to have enough evidence to secure an arrest.
“[The thief] will wait for a guard to leave, and he knows he has the rest of the night,” Chaka said. “What you need to do is to show them that this is not going to pay off.”
For instance, he said, although the thief spray painted the security camera lens, multiple cameras were able to capture the license plate.
Salzmann said police told him they have narrowed in on a falsely rented apartment they believe is a headquarters for the ring.
Norfleet also discouraged people from confronting anyone accessing mailboxes who clearly isn’t a postal worker.
“These are criminals. They are dangerous. They are frequently armed. Don’t confront them. The mail is not worth getting shot over,” Norfleet said. “We can replace those checks and cards. We can’t replace someone who gets hurt.”
Once they have called police, Norfleet urged those who have had mail stolen to call (877) 876-2455 or online at uspis.gov.
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