Sting Successful, Thief Caught, Coins Recovered!

Or, be careful who you discuss your hobbies with!

I had a "fun" weekend, which was the culmination of something that had been ongoing for about three months.

The "Post Office" I use to send out the majority of my hobby mail is located in a drug store in my neighbourhood. It isn't a "real" Post Office installation, rather it is a franchise granted to the drug store's owner that allows him to put up official signage and engage in the business usually done by a Post Office, such as selling stamps and other postal services, accepting mail for pick-up by Postal vans and trucks, and administering a small bank of mail boxes that are rented by various people. In otherwords, it's a Post Office, but isn't really.

These installations are common in this country, and the introduction of them coincided with the closing of several real Post Offices in an effort at downsizing. They are staffed by whoever the franchise holder decides to hire, and those persons are accountable to him and not the Post Office -- which means they are not Post Office employees in any sense of the word -- they are drug store staff that work on the postal counter.

In the late fall of last year, I noticed a new staff member at my local installation, a kid who looked to be under 20. Despite his seemingly young age, he was friendly and efficient, and he would engage me in conversation beyond the usual "Hi, how are you?"-type stuff. On one visit, I was sending out a bunch of stamps to a stamp collector friend in the US; on the envelope was a variety of Canadian stamps to make up the rate, and I asked if he would hand cancel the envelope so that it wouldn't get caught in the machinery at the Post Office, because it bulged. As he cancelled the dozen or so stamps on the envelope, he asked me if I was a stamp collector, and I acknowledged that I was, and he mentioned something about his grandfather being one too, and that he had also collected coins. Keeping the converation going, I mentioned that I, too, collected coins.

As it turned out, that was a mistake, but I wouldn't know this until later.

The kid in question, it turned out, worked the late shift there, from 2 in the afternoon until closing of the store and the postal counter at 8 in the evening, Monday through Friday. As the evening was the best time for me to mail out items, I always encountered him whenever I went to do so.

In January, I had the occasion to mail out a couple of envelopes containing coins. Again, the envelopes each had a few stamps on them, and again because of what was in the envelope, I requested the envelope to be hand cancelled, and since both were going overseas (one to Turkey and one to Poland), I needed confirmation that I had enough postage on them.

About a month later, my correspondents informed me that their coins had not arrived, much to my chagrin. I put together similar packages (I had kept track of what I sent to who in the form of a list), and once again, I sent out packages duplicating what I had formerly sent out, mentioning to the clerk that it was strange but a couple of packages had gone missing, something that had never happened before. Looking back on the situation now, it seems to me that he was rather quick to blame the postal systems of "other countries", but I didn't think anything of it at the time.

Within a few days, I got notification from two different people that other shipements of coins had not arrived. The two duplicate packages didn't arrive either, it turns out, and one of those recipients suggested to me that the item had been stolen. When a shipment of foreign currency failed to arrive, it was the last straw as far as I was concerned.

For a few weeks, I sent out non-valuable shipments of pennies to friends (who weren't collectors), making them look like they were typical shipments of coins as had been previously shipped. None of them arrived, either, and about six of these were mailed out over a month-long period.

I approached the owner of the drug store and had a chat with him about the situation. He told me that he had gotten a few similar complaints from about three other customers regarding items mailed there not making it to where they were addressed. However, he didn't know what to do, despite the fact that all items that had disappeared had originated from his postal counter. He didn't know who to blame, nor how to prove it, and was worried about what would happen if he was wrong, that he would get sued over a false accusation.

We were fairly sure that the culprit was the young guy who worked on the counter, but we still weren't sure how to prove it, and then I had an idea. On Friday, about a half hour before closing, I showed up and presented a padded envelope for mailing, as usual. Inside of it was a cell phone that was turned on.

When 8:00 arrived, I was in the back with the owner. He was sitting behind the pharmacy desk as usual, and I was behind the display in his office. The last duty of the two clerks (one on the front counter, one on the postal desk) was to bring back and turn in the money from their tills, and then they would be let out of the now-locked store by the back door when they were done. Things transpired as usual, except just as the owner finished counting the kid's till, I called the cell phone number, and the kid's backpack started ringing.

Busted!

The kid looked a little confused, and the phone kept ringing. His boss suggested that he answer the phone, that it could be important, and it appeared that the kid didn't know what to do.

I stepped out from the office, phone in hand, and said to him, "Yes, it could be important -- it could be information about a mail thief or something."

He knew he was caught, and he opened up his backpack. Inside were three items of mail, all small packets, including the one I had mailed out, which was ringing.

We suggested he sit down, and we put it to him that he was responsible for at least sixteen thefts, and related each one of them to him. He admitted it, and the whole thing was captured by the store's security system on tape. I then told him what the penalty was for mail theft under the Criminal Code, and asked him to give us a good reason why we shouldn't call the police.

It was our turn to be surprised; he admitted to the thefts, but said that he still had the mail in question, and that he hadn't yet opened any of it -- it was all stashed under his bed, in his room at his mother's house -- and if we liked, we could go and pick it up.

So we did. Turns out there were twenty-six small packets in all. We still debated calling the cops, but came to the conclusion that it would have been better and a lot less of a hassle to just fire the kid, despite the fact that his mother suggested that he should perform some form of retribution either for his boss (who didn't want him on the premises ever again) or for the people who had been inconvenienced. Because the matter would have taken forever to get to court (probably about six to eight months) and the value of everything didn't break $1,000.00, and the fact that the kid had an otherwise spotless record, we couldn't in all good faith prolong the situation any more than it had been. The other thing was that the twenty-six items would have been held as evidence, which would further inconvenience the owners, and that the owner of the drug store would likely have lost his postal franchise, which wouldn't have been fair to him.

It appears that the kid learned his lesson, he lost his job and he now has to put up with his mother nagging him; I don't think he got off all that lightly. His former boss refuses to give him any kind of a reference, so getting a replacement job may not be all that easy.

The moral of the story? Be careful who you mention your hobby to -- the person who seems trustworthy may not be!


And those of you who have been waiting for packages from me, they're on their way. Really! With bonuses for the inconvenience!