Photo Courtesy of Google
Crooks have fished out letters containing personal checks from this mailbox at 149th Avenue and 122nd Street.
By Michael V. Cusenza
Crooked, dry-land “fishermen” might be making a comeback in some south Queens communities.
A South Ozone Park man this week reached out to The Forum to tell his personal story of identity theft and how a check he mailed out last month was stolen from a blue U.S. Postal Service curbside collection box near his home via a method known in law enforcement circles as “mailbox fishing.”
“I was upset right away, like ‘How the hell does this happen?” Tom Pawlowski, a retired Sanitation worker and U.S. Army veteran, told The Forum on Monday.
Fishing is a federal crime in which envelopes containing checks and valuable personal information are “fished out” of mailboxes by resourceful crooks using a makeshift rod: an adhesive attached to the end of a string or rope. The perpetrators then cash in at banks or check-cashing establishments through various deceitful methods.
Pawlowski, who has lived in South Ozone Park for 60 years, said he realized that he was a victim as soon as his neighborhood bank informed him that the check he had dropped in the box at 149th Avenue and 122nd Street to pay a bill had been cashed.
“I said ‘By who?!?’” Pawlowski recounted, noting that the bank told him it was cashed in upstate Utica.
So Pawlowski filed an official complaint with a detective in the 106th Precinct Detective Squad, who told him that he wasn’t alone, and that she had taken quite a few mailbox fishing complaints over the past week (the last week of April.)
The Forum reached out to Capt. Mike Edmonds, the precinct’s executive officer, to see if, indeed, this scourge, which was such a problem a year ago in the command, is roaring back into town. Edmonds said that though records show three complaints for fishing over the past 30 days, “my detective squad is aware of it. It seems more prevalent in other precincts, but we’ll stay mindful.”
Last spring, USPS officials indicated to area residents that fishing had become an issue in south Queens.
“I’m going to be honest with you: It’s a significant problem for the Post Office right now,” Postal Inspector Rich Gutierrez told members of the community who gathered at St. Helen Catholic Academy for the April 2016 meeting of the Howard Beach-Lindenwood Civic. “And I don’t know how we’re going to stop it.”
That same month, Pablo Fernandez was caught red-handed fishing envelopes out of a collection box at 153rd Avenue and 83rd Street in Lindenwood.
As for Pawlowski, the incident has had a profound effect on his routine.
“It’s unbelievable how they can ruin your life,” he said. “Now I’m afraid to drop it in the box. I’ve got to get in the car and drive to Howard Beach or Liberty Avenue.”
