There were few issues that gathered more attention in banking in 2024 than check fraud. Community bankers in every part of the nation have been dealing with the significant impacts of fraud and weak controls at the nation’s largest banks, which allow it to proliferate.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) recently released a report analyzing the role that the USPS may play in this problem, with workers’ participation in theft of mail.
In the report, the U.S. Postal Service’s Inspector General said that criminal organizations are “targeting, recruiting and colluding with postal employees to move narcotics through the postal network and to steal checks – both personal and government-issued checks – credit cards and other valuables from the mail.”
The report posited several factors contributing to internal mail theft, including the lack of a nationwide policy restricting personal belongings on the workroom floor, high supervisor and manager vacancy rates and not having periodic mail theft awareness employee training. While processing facilities have cameras, some of them were not working because of switch, server or cable failures.
In December, Federal prosecutors charged two postal workers with stealing more than $1 million in business checks at facilities in Virginia and North Carolina. There was also a mail handler in St. Louis accused of stealing 55 out of 150 packages from a truck. That investigation found that other mail handlers were working as lookouts while stashing and storing packages in their jackets. The Wall Street Journal has featured two opinion pieces of late, calling further attention to the issues of lackadaisical enforcement of laws regarding check fraud and failures of the USPS to protect the mail system.
