Arrests Made in a Rash of Mailbox Thefts : Crime: Thieves take letters containing cash and credit card information by fishing out envelopes through the drop slots.

U.S. postal inspectors have arrested some members of a ring of thieves who steal envelopes containing checks, credit card statements and other financial documents from mail drop boxes at post offices throughout the San Fernando Valley, sources said Thursday.

The investigation, launched about six months ago, has netted numerous suspects who appear to be a ring of drug users from the Hollywood area who steal mail to feed their habits, according to a source close to the case.

“Everybody appears to know everybody else, although I’m sure it’s branching out and other people are getting involved,” the source said.

Postal officials declined to elaborate on the number of arrests made to date in the investigation, saying only that there is a theft problem and they expect more arrests in the near future.

Oversized mail boxes--which are harder to steal from--are being installed at post offices targeted by thieves in Studio City, Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood, Randy DeGasperin, a Postal Inspection Service spokesman, said Thursday.

The thefts occur mostly at night, when the thieves can simply reach into the blue drop boxes and grab uncollected mail with their hands if the boxes are full enough, or use bent coat hangers to fish out envelopes, he said.

The thieves glean information from credit card bills and checks that can then be used to commit other crimes, officials say, using credit card numbers to make fraudulent charges to the accounts. With phony identification, checks can also be forged and cashed.

“What appears to be just another bill you’re paying is something more to the crooks,” DeGasperin said.

As a result, postal officials say they have received dozens of reports in recent months of mail stolen from mailboxes throughout the Valley. They noted that the Studio City post office on Laurel Canyon Boulevard has been particularly hard hit.

The larger drop boxes are harder to steal from because it takes more mail to pile up to a height where the thieves can reach it easily.

A batch of mail believed to have been stolen from a post office mail box in the San Fernando Valley was also recently recovered and will be analyzed for possible leads, DeGasperin said.

In the past, thieves have stolen mail from residential boxes, postal trucks and offices and have even attacked postal carriers. It has been only in the last couple of years, say postal officials, that they began receiving reports that mail was being taken from the big blue mail boxes outside post offices.

“This is something we’ve never really had to deal with before,” DeGasperin said.

DeGasperin said a rash of incidents was first reported in 1992 when a ring of thieves began preying on mail boxes at post offices in Torrance, Gardena and Redondo Beach. In that case, a group of suspects were later arrested. Since then, thefts from mail boxes at post offices have occurred in what DeGasperin called “streaks” throughout Los Angeles County.

In response to the recent outbreak of thefts in the Valley, signs are being made to place on the mail boxes, warning customers to notify postal officials if the box appears full and then to drop their letters either inside the post office or at another location, DeGasperin said.

Brad Abrell, a North Hollywood resident, said he recently fell victim when six bills he mailed last month at the Valley Village post office in North Hollywood never reached his creditors.

Abrell said he had finished writing checks to pay a half dozen bills shortly after midnight on Dec. 30 and then decided to drive to the post office to mail them.

“Even as I got out of my car I felt like somebody was watching me,” Abrell said. “There was a van close by, and it was really dark, which added to the whole atmosphere of it being eerie.”

Abrell said it was not until he sat down to balance his checking account on Tuesday that he realized that none of the checks he mailed that night, nearly three weeks ago, had been cashed. He said he called the local post office and was told that they had been having a lot of problems with mail being stolen from boxes.

As a precaution, Abrell said he has closed his checking account and opened a new one out of fear that crooks can use the information on the stolen checks to commit more crimes.

“If they have my account number and my signature, that’s all it takes,” Abrell said.