Photo Courtesy of NYPD
Part of the 112th Precinct Anti-Crime team that nabbed Everett.
By Michael V. Cusenza
Anti-Crime Unit cops working out of the 112th Precinct nabbed a notorious mailbox fisherman in the act in Rego Park earlier this month, according to police and published reports.
Travis Everett, 25, was arraigned on Thursday, Nov. 8, on a criminal complaint charging him with a litany of felonies and misdemeanors, including second-degree criminal possession of stolen property greater than $50,000. As of Wednesday, he remained on Rikers Island with bail set at $20,000 bond/$10,000 cash.
Mailbox fishing is a federal crime in which envelopes containing checks and sensitive documents are “fished out” of blue curbside U.S. Postal Service collection boxes by resourceful crooks using a makeshift rod: an adhesive slathered all over a weighted “hook” attached to the end of a string or rope. Perpetrators then cash in at banks or check-cashing establishments through various document-manipulation methods.
Everett “used a shoelace attached to batteries with duct tape and rat trap glue to ‘go fishing,’” inside a USPS mailbox, according to a report Friday on abc7ny.com. A subsequent search of his vehicle yielded a staggering 346 stolen checks totaling roughly $400,000.
Postal Service officials have said that the agency is in the process of replacing all NYC curbside collection boxes with newer models designed to deter fishing.
