Stacks of boxes holding mail are seen at a U.S. Post Office sorting center. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Following a national trend, a panel of legislators in the Alaska House of Representatives has been examining whether mail theft, currently investigated and prosecuted by the federal government, should also be a state crime.
Adding mail theft to the list of state crimes would allow local police and prosecutors to handle work currently performed by federal officials. That could lead to quicker prosecutions and convictions and allow small mail thefts to be prosecuted.
House Bill 77, introduced at the end of January by Rep. Julie Coulombe, R-Anchorage, would make mail theft a class C felony, while House Bill 106, from Gov. Mike Dunleavy, would make it a class A misdemeanor. If the theft involves medical records, Dunleavy’s bill would label the mail theft a class C felony as well.
Other sections of Dunleavy’s bill deal with “organized thefts,” those involving more than one perpetrator.
The House Judiciary Committee heard Coulombe’s bill last week and the governor’s on Monday.
“This piece of legislation came to me from a constituent of mine, Tiffani Loughman, an (Anchorage Police Department) detective in the fraud department,” Coulombe told the committee.
Loughman, testifying to lawmakers, called mail theft “a serious crime with wide-reaching effects, and it’s on the rise.”
In a November 2023 report, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service — in charge of investigating mail theft nationally — stated that since 2020, “the Postal Service has experienced a significant growth in mail theft from mail receptacles primarily due to financially motivated crimes, notably including check fraud.”
In her work, Loughman said, she sees mail theft as the first step toward identity theft, adding that it “disproportionately affects elderly and vulnerable populations” who may rely on traditional mail and be unaware of missing documents.
“Theft can be financially devastating for elderly individuals, especially if they rely on fixed incomes or have limited financial resources. If a thief steals a check, credit cards or other financial documents, it can result in a significant financial hardship,” she said.
The Virginia Legislature passed a mail theft bill last week by a wide, bipartisan margin. Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Illinois are also considering similar legislation, according to a database kept by Legiscan, a nonpartisan legislative tracking and data service.
Currently, the postal inspection service investigates mail theft cases, which are then prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Anchorage said small mail thefts generally aren’t prosecuted.
“Discrete instances of mail theft are not typically referred to our office for prosecution,” said the spokesperson, providing a written statement. “Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, penalties for discrete acts of mail theft are determined by the value of the stolen property in increments of thousands of dollars, and oftentimes, many discrete acts of mail theft do not have a high property value and do not rise to the level of federal prosecution.”
The spokesperson added that if the theft occurs in conjunction with a larger fraud scheme, it will be prosecuted.
“In those cases, our office usually charges the larger fraud scheme rather than the separate acts of mail theft involved in the scheme,” the statement said.
Testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee, Coulombe chief of staff Ryan Sheldon told lawmakers that federal officials can’t officially say so, “but they are unofficially excited for such legislation,” he said.
“They have a long backlog of cases, and so mail theft isn’t something that they necessarily, quote, unquote, go after at this time,” Sheldon said.
Deputy Attorney General John Skidmore, speaking on the governor’s bill, told the committee, “Just because something is a federal crime doesn’t mean that they always prosecute it. Our federal prosecutors have certain thresholds, if you will, of when they will and won’t prosecute cases. … So unfortunately, our mail theft does not always get the attention that it needs. I can’t promise you that every mail theft would be prosecuted by the state, but by giving us the ability to pursue such charges, it at least gives us another avenue to try and pursue those.”
Rep. Mia Costello, R-Anchorage and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said she herself was a victim of mail theft and identity fraud when she was on maternity leave.
“I just want to say that my experience was that it was literally a full-time job keeping track of all of the activity. Different credit cards were taken out in my name, and then merchandise was delivered to my porch. And while I was with my newborn, I would look out the window and I would see a car driving down my driveway, and I knew that somebody was casing my house and picking up the packages that were purchased with this stolen identity,” she said.
Loughman said that during the course of her work with APD, “a lot of times we come across stolen mail, like copious amounts of stolen mail in vehicles (or with) people walking down the street, and it’s obvious that their intent for that is to either do check fraud or identity theft or open up credit cards in people’s names.”
Creating a state mail-theft statute “would give us some teeth” in those cases, she said.
If signed into law, Coulombe’s HB 77 would cover mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service as well as packages delivered by private companies like FedEx or Amazon. The governor’s HB 106 would be limited to mail delivered by the Postal Service.
Both bills were submitted with a zero fiscal note, meaning that executive branch analysts think there won’t be any additional costs associated with the bills — any extra work would be added to what state employees are already doing.
A review of similar legislation in other states shows similar zero or “indeterminate” fiscal notes, meaning that costs could not be determined.
Some members of the Judiciary Committee were skeptical of that claim, noting that public defenders, prosecutors and the state court system are already overloaded.
Coulombe, responding to questions, noted that if her bill were to be signed into law, it could act as a deterrent and keep people from stealing mail in the first place.
“A lot of this is deterrence, which we don’t really have now. Mail thieves know that nothing gets prosecuted,” she said. “Nothing is happening now, so we can’t really say how many court cases this is going to add.”
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