Mail Fishing Thefts On The Rise In Bayside Area: NYPD

BAYSIDE, QUEENS -- Cops are urging northeast Queens residents to stop using public mailboxes after a rash of mail fishing thefts in the Bayside and Little Neck area.

The NYPD's 111th precinct tweeted the latest of several warnings on Monday urging residents to hand deliver their mail to the post office to avoid mail fishing - where thieves cover an average tool with a sticky substance and using it to pluck checks, bank documents and birthday cards from collection boxes. Perps then often "wash" the checks with acetone to erase the ink and put in their own information, police said.

Bayside has already been subject to more than a half dozen mail fishing thefts in July alone, police said. USPS recently started installing security devices on mailboxes in Queens to combat mailbox fishing, but they've yet to make their way to Bayside.

"Our USPS boxes won't be secured until they are replaced AND have new locks," Capt. John Hall tweeted from the Precinct 111 account Monday.

Checks were most recently reported washed, stolen and cashed from U.S. Postal Service mailboxes along Bell Boulevard - several times at 73rd Avenue and once at Horace Harding - and outside the Little Neck Post Office on Northern Boulevard, Hall said. Also targeted in the heists were USPS boxes at Springfield Boulevard and Kingsbury Avenue, Thornhill Avenue and Browvale Lane, and 73rd Ave and 210th Street.

In addition to avoiding public mailboxes, police are advising northeast Queens residents to write checks in permanent in that can't be erased, frequently check their account balances for suspicious activity, and immediately call 911 to report anyone tampering with mailboxes.

The recent warnings follow a slew of more than a dozen thefts in the area dating back to mid-June from USPS collection boxes at: 188th Street and 48th Avenue, Bell Boulevard and 35th Avenue, Marathon Parkway and Northern Boulevard, outside the Flushing and Bayside Post Offices, and along Springfield Boulevard at 73rd and 64th avenues.

Lead photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images