Nine members and associates of a Boston street gang facing federal charges for their alleged roles in a mail theft ring targeting Wellesley and surrounding suburban towns “rely upon one another to recruit” people to set up bank accounts to cash the checks the perpetrators steal from postal collection boxes, court records show.
Federal prosecutors last week announced the charges against the nine reputed members and associates of the Mission Hill Gang for allegedly participating in the scheme underpinned by stolen checks from collection boxes that are then chemically washed and rewritten to various bank accounts. Six of the associates were arrested last week, and three more were already in custody.
Several of the defendants made initial appearances in federal court in Boston in the last week, with at least four released on bond, records show.
In an affidavit filed Aug. 27, ATF Special Agent E. Austin Wozniak wrote that the men allegedly perpetrated the fraud between July 2023 and February 2024. Their alleged behavior is called “card cracking,” he wrote.
“Card cracking schemes are fueled by checks that are stolen from U.S. Postal Service (’USPS’) collection boxes,” Wozniak wrote. “The ink from stolen checks [is] chemically washed and rewritten to various recruited bank account holders. These washed checks are deposited into checking accounts for cash withdrawal or laundering through money transfers and other means, such as the purchase of postal money orders.”
Once the parcels are purloined, Wozniak said, “offenders wash stolen checks with chemicals that erase handwritten ink, leaving the check otherwise intact. This process allows for the blank check to be rewritten to any intended payee in any amount.”
Straw account holders are typically recruited through social media and word of mouth and get compensated with a cut of the ill-gotten cash, according to the affidavit.
“Account holders essentially allow for a card cracking suspect to take control of their bank account,” Wozniak wrote. “Stolen, washed checks are deposited into account holders’ bank accounts via ATM deposits or mobile deposits, the account balance is monitored, and cash is withdrawn at ATM machines as soon as it is made available by the bank.”
He wrote that during the summer of 2023, Wellesley police and surrounding law enforcement agencies started receiving numerous check fraud reports pertaining to checks placed in the mail in June and July of last year.
There were 21 such incidents during that time period reported in Wellesley, Brookline, West Roxbury, Newton, Needham, Sherborn, Brockton, and Braintree, the affidavit said.
“Wellesley Police had detectives assigned to this long running investigation, and we are obviously very pleased at the results with these charges,” said Wellesley Police Chief Scott Whittemore in a statement. “Our officers and detectives have invested a great deal of time and effort investigating this case, as well as the many other mail theft cases that have occurred.”
The fraudulent check cashing “unfortunately continues however,” Whittemore said.
He said Wellesley and other communities “continue to experience theft from blue mailboxes. These thefts, usually by suspects with keys, occur during the overnight and early morning hours. We’ve noted the thefts are prevalent after hours on the weekends as well. I would continue to stress that citizens avoid using blue mailboxes, and instead go inside the Post Office to mail letters. I would strongly suggest never mailing a letter after the posted collection times, or in a case where the letter would potentially sit overnight in a mailbox.”
And the stolen cash fuels devastating violence, according to agent Wozniak.
“I learned that some Mission Hill members and associates use the proceeds from the target offenses to purchase weapons, which facilitates violent crime within the gang,” he wrote in the affidavit, adding that the gangsters also allegedly “sell stolen checks to further profit from their mail theft.”
Such theft has been a longstanding issue in Massachusetts.
In January, Needham police warned residents of mailbox “phishing” and urged them to bring outgoing mail into a post office instead of trusting public boxes. Thieves had allegedly been using keys to open mailboxes at mail drop-off locations and stealing mail inside, police said at the time.
In late 2022, Needham, along with other neighboring communities, was targeted for mail thefts by people looking to steal checks, authorities said. In December 2022, cops in Dedham said they had received “multiple reports of mailbox fishing,” and in September 2022, two members of the Newton Police Department took part in a sting operation that resulted in the arrest of an alleged mailbox thief. In August of that year, after receiving multiple reports of checks being stolen from mailboxes and altered (for amounts totaling more than $250,000), police in Mattapoisett arrested two 18-year-olds from Dorchester who were allegedly seen mailbox fishing.
Then, last November, police arrested two men and recovered more than 1,000 pieces of mail allegedly stolen in Wellesley after thieves crashed a vehicle in Brookline.
Some thieves have been even more brazen, robbing letter carriers at gunpoint.
In late December, Boston police responded to a radio call reporting an armed robbery at Talbot and Welles avenues, police said in a statement. Officers located a postal worker who said his mail key was stolen at gunpoint, the statement said.
Another robbery of a mail carrier by a gun-toting assailant was reported in December 2022 in Melrose.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.