6 Ways To Stop Porch Pirates In Mooresville

MOORESVILLE, NC— Online shopping has reached an all-time high due to the coronavirus pandemic as package thieves gear up for the holiday season in Mooresville and across the country.

More than 5.5 million Americans have been victimized by package thefts over the past year, according to Finder, a personal finance comparison website, in a study released in November.

About $5.4 billion worth of items were stolen in package thefts from November 2019 to November 2020, the Finder determined.

Because of the busy online shopping month of December, that number is likely to grow by the end of the year.

Captain Chris Jorgensen on the Mooresville Police Department recommended these tips for preventing package theft:

• Try to schedule your packages to be delivered when you will be home. If this is not possible, request your packages be held at the delivery service facility for you to pick up at your convenience.
• Request for the delivery service to obtain a signature upon delivery of the package.
• If you will be going on vacation, place a hold on your mail being delivered.
• Consider installing surveillance cameras. This can be a theft deterrent. Should you have a package stolen, the video footage can be helpful for police detectives.
• Consider using a friend, relative, or neighbor's address if they are home more frequently or live in a more secluded area.
• If you see someone taking packages off porches and not entering the home, document the time and date, as well as the person's clothing and physical description and call the Mooresville Police Department

If you think a package was stolen:

• If you did not receive your shipment on time, check with the company of origin to confirm the delivery.
• If you tracked your shipment and know it was delivered, report the theft or loss:
• Contact the original company you ordered from.
• Contact the shipping company.
• Contact the Mooresville Police Department to make a report using the non-emergency number 704-664-3311.

Fewer people were in the nation’s malls on Black Friday, and Cyber Monday is expected to become the busiest online shopping day of all time when all sales are totaled, according to The Associated Press.

Overall holiday season sales in 2020 are expected to rise 0.9 percent, with a 36 percent jump in online sales, a study by the research company eMarketer shows.

Porch pirates could see a prime opportunity to take advantage of the expected spike in packages left at front doors.

They usually get away with it, too. Only 11 percent of victims said the culprits were caught, according to a 2019 study by C+R Research.

Who Steals A Package?
Men are found to be more likely to be both package thieves and victims of the crime, according to the Finder study. With 5.29 percent of men admitting having stolen a package compared with 0.85 percent of women, men are more than 500 percent more likely to be package thieves than women, the study found.

Seventeen percent of men say a package of theirs was stolen during the past year, compared with 11 percent for women.

Still, 86 percent of the nearly 2,000 participants in the study said they have not experienced a package theft since this time last year.

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