Police Warn Forest Hills Residents Of Mailbox Fishing

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Mailbox fishing leads to check washing, the NYPD’s 112th Precinct recently wrote in a tweet.

Check washing is a process through which thieves use common household products to alter checks that they have stolen out of mailboxes, police say.

The checks are then made payable to the thieves or other parties.

Residents can prevent their checks from being altered in a number of ways. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Police recommend using a pen with pigmented ink to write checks because this type of ink is not easy to alter. Residents should also shred all voided or incorrectly written checks.

Finally, police advise residents to check their account balance on a regular basis in order to ensure that checks were cleared by the establishment to whom the check was written.

Thieves usually rewrite the check for the original amount that was written, changing only the name of the payee, according to police.

For more information, residents can contact the 112 Precinct’s Crime Prevention Division at (718) 520-9312.

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