Victims say man charged with forgery stole checks out of USPS drop boxes
Click here for updates on this story
INDEPENDENCE, MO (KCTV) — Several victims said they learned the hard way that their checks mailed using USPS (United States Postal Service) drop boxes weren’t safe.
As KCTV5’s Emily Rittman explains, a man is now charged with forgery after being accused of washing their checks to cash in.
Several of those victims mailed their checks using a USPS drop box off 24 Highway near Chrisman Plaza. However, they soon learned their checks never made it to the right place.
After Evelyn Blake signed a check to pay Independence Power & Light, she dropped it off at a USPS box like she always had, assuming it was safe. Then she got a notice saying her bill was unpaid. “I wondered why because I knew I had mailed it,” she recalled.
Evelyn then went to her bank to find out what went wrong. “They said, ‘This check is made out to a Christopher Mort,’” she said. “I don’t know him.”
Brian Lucy was also asked if he wrote a check to a Christopher Mort after his bank spotted possible fraudulent activity. “I said, ‘No, I do not know this person,’” he said.
Brian said a check written to pay a Visa bill was altered and cashed by Mort. “They use chemicals to erase the ink marks on the check,” he explained.
That Christopher Mort is now charged with four counts of forgery after being accused of stealing checks sent in the mail, altering them to increase the amount, and making the checks out to himself.
“He used auto-deposit and took a photo of the check image on his phone,” Lucy said. “There was no real examination of the check surface like there used to be back in the day.”
Evelyn doesn’t trust mailing payments anymore. She now drives to make her utility payments in person. When asked, she said, “Frustrating? Yes, because it took me a while to get the light company paid up for what I owed. My money is my money. It’s hard to come by. We have our Social Security.”
Court records do not reveal how investigators think Mort got the mail out of the USPS drop boxes.
However, Lucy believes he may have figured it out. “Now I check post office boxes and I found people are tampering with some local boxes and putting adhesives or sticky substances on the intake,” he said. He can’t say for sure but wonders if Mort used a similar sticky tactic on the slots of USPS boxes. Therefore, he recommends examining the slot before mailing checks.
Mort, who pleaded guilty to failing to register as a sex offender after being convicted of statutory rape, is also charged with trafficking in stolen identities in a separate case.
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.
