Yesterday I learned that my outgoing mail vanished between the time I put it out in the morning and the time the mailman came in the afternoon. We are assuming it was stolen. The mail included four bills I was paying out of my account, and two that my husband was paying out of his account. We have already placed stop pays on the checks. How worried should be we about identity theft? Should we get new checking accounts or place a fraud alert with our credit union? Two of the bills I was paying were store credit cards, should I have the cards cancelled and get new ones? Any advice for us?
I would contact everyone you paid, let them know what happened, and alert your bank. You also need to look into online bill pay. Most banks have it now, and it’s usually free.
Contact the USPS Postal Inspectors. Now.
Thanks. That’s been done already, just a few hours after the presumed theft.
I called one of my store credit cards, and explained the situation. I was informed they could not give me a new credit card number under these circumstances, so phooey on them, I closed the account altogether.
I’d be worried about check washing above all. I hope you’ve already called your bank and closed the acct.
As a related question, I’d like to know: What can the thief get from this stolen mail? How can Joe The Thief cash a check made out to Municipal Electric Company?
I’m willing to bet that Joe the Thief scans both sides of the cheque, photoshops out “Municipal Electric Company”, photoshops in “Friendly Neighbourhood Fence From Whom I Get A Cut”, prints out the forged cheque, and goes to deposit it there. Or there’s some way of using the account information on the cheque.
I would check your credit report (you have the right to one credit report per agency per year, so it may be worth getting one now and the others spread over the next few months to check nothing has happened). NOTE: this is an ACTUAL federally-mandated free credit report site, DO NOT trust the numerous well publicized “free” credit report sites (with catchy jingles) that are actually any but free.
Depending on your state have also have the right to a put a security alert on your credit history which can prevent people from opening accounts in your name (though note there are some gotchas to this, such being charges to remove it, in some states).
Or engages in check washing, which dissolves the ink and gives the forger a nice blank check to work with.
wonders if things she types become invisible
taps the mike
“Is this thing on?”
"tap tap*
“Check washing, check washing, 1-2-3.”
New Checking account: yes
Fraud alert: yes
Cancel cards and get new ones: yes
It’s possible someone just grabbed it and threw it in a mailbox for you. But I’d prepare for the worst. Get all accounts and credit cards involved closed at once, with notifications that your information may have been compromised. Check your mail very carefully. If your email address was listed on any of your outgoing mail, I’d change that too. As another precaution, if your planning on changing anything with passwords, I’d reset the pw’s before giving up the accts. You can’t be too careful, take any precautions you can think of. And I’m sure you’ve got this one down now, but don’t leave mail out for the mailman to pick up from now on.
:smack: Accidentally skimmed past your post - one of the problems with brevity, I suspect.
Or else everyone has you on ignore. 
If you suspect this may have happened you also need to contact Chex Systems a credit reporting agency that is run by the banking industry. They are not listed on most identity theft sites (and are not part of the “big three” credit agencies). They are particularly secretive (notice there website does not make it obvious that it is in fact the homepage of a credit reporting agency). But its important you get a report from them, when I had my ID stolen I had nothing on my regular credit reports (as bad checks do not appear there) but tons of stuff on my Chex Systems report. I only found out years later when I tried to open a checking account.
Slightly offtopic, but you can buy fraud-prevention ink that can’t be washed or bleached out of paper, e.g. Noodler’s bulletproof ink. Buy a nice fountain pen that you use for signing things and fill it with Noodlers and you’re good to go.
Or…do online bill pay!
(Yeesh, no one is reading other people’s posts today, are they?)
When this happened at my place of work, they used the checking account info to forge checks that were then sent out in a lottery scam, then they washed the original check and rewrote it and tried to cash it to the tune of $75,000.00.
The bank caught the forged checks before anything got posted and the account was long closed by the time the washed check came through. I second the advice to close the account now.
:eek:
Wow, I’d probably keep going and report them to the BBB.
This is the scam that happened to me, which ultimately caused me to close bank account and put a password on the new account for extra verification during in-person transactions:
They created a fake company check (from some fictitious company) made out to me, they then went to my bank and deposited most of the check into my account and got back $1,000 in cash during the transaction.
They also wrote fake checks on my account at various retailers.
Didn’t realize it was an either/or choice. As someone who uses online bill pay for most things, I also have to write some checks.
I was very pleased to discover recently that online bill pay at my bank (actually a credit union) includes not only writing checks to people I need to write checks to, but mailing them for me.
Goodbye, checkbook.