Postal Theft

I think someone at the post office has one of the greatest collections of coins in the world. Does the post office x-ray packages? If so, could this be where our coins seem to fall of the face of the Earth? I know it's not everyone and it may not be anyone taking the packages with coins in them, but it makes me wonder.

Some people only see opportunity in a situation where they know who's watching, how to cover up and a package with no insurance may be too tempting.

About 20 years ago I live in an apartment and as I was at the mail boxes, I started talking to another tenant and as it turned out, both of us were missing mail each month. We waited for another person to show up and asked it they had the same problem. They did. Once we had about a dozen tenants all saying they had the same problem, we went to the apartment office to complain.

They called the Post Master and they filed a complaint. As it turned out, our carrier was stopping at a nearby park to drink and opening our bills, cards, letters and anything else he thought could contain something of value. Once he had open enough mail for the day he would dump all that he had opened in a large drainage pipe under a bridge in the park and deliver what he had left, mostly junk mail and magazines. They followed him and found what he was doing.

We started getting all of our mail after that, but we had no idea what he had taken. About 6 months after he was arrested and charged, we got a large canvas package from the Post Master with 100s of pieces of opened mail that had been dumped in water and was covered with filth and mold. The letter with the package said that the carrier had been charged with mail theft and, if found guilty, faced a jail term of 10 to 15 years.

I never found out if he went to jail, but at least he was caught and fired.

2 years ago I had a pkg missing from the U.S.Mint, it included 5 Proof Sets, I was notified by the Post Office that an employee at the local sort facility had been caught stealing. He was arrested, Charged, and convicted. The P.O. kept me informed by mail of the whole process. They did return 2 Proof Sets to me that were found in the box shipped by the Mint, but they were damaged pretty badly. Best of all he is in jail and was sentenced to 10 yrs.

The worst thing that could happen is that you have a dishonest post office employee who has noticed that your address receives packages containing valuable things (coins and/or notes) so he keeps an eye on all packages heading towards this address