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Stolen mail from Wellesley crash lands in Brookline along with the two people who allegedly stole it
By adamg on Mon, 11/27/2023 - 4:09pm
Newton Police report that a couple of guys who'd just stolen a lot of money in Wellesley proved unable to deal with the windy roads of Newton and Brookline and crashed after escaping a traffic stop on Rte. 9 at Hammond Pond Parkway early this morning.
According to Newton Police, around 4 a.m., they were alerted by their counterparts in Wellesley that officers there were pursuing a car involved in a mail theft. Around 4 a.m., a Newton officer spotted the car and got the driver to stop near Hammond Pond Parkway, only the driver then fled at, naturally, a high rate of speed towards Brookline, police say.
Not long after, police say, the same officer spotted a newly crashed car on Newton Street over the Brookline line:
After a short foot pursuit and investigation, two adult males were placed under arrest for Receiving Stolen Property and Failure to Stop for Police. Over a thousand pieces of stolen mail were recovered.
Yasser Teixeira Mendonca, 22, of New York and Dahshein Karon Perry, 22, of the Boston area, were both arraigned on a charge of receiving stolen property worth more than $1,200 in Newton District Court, according to court records.
The Swellesley Report reports Wellesley Police began looking for the two after receiving an alarm from a post box outside the Grove Street post office around 2:30 a.m.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
Home grown (alleged) criminal
Dahshein used to play basketball for Charlestown High as late as 2019. I guess he's now graduated to crime.
They were so close to safety
They were so close to safety of Boston.
Aren't there federal crimes
Aren't there federal crimes regarding messing with the mail that are far more serious than receiving stolen property?
Feds aren't working at 4am.....
So they can't be charged federally.
(What usually happens is that the state drops whatever charges they have and the feds follow up with their own charges in the district court)
How is the value of mail determined?
Personally, I'd have to guess that 99.9% of the mail I receive has absolutely no value to anyone, even me (although I suppose I would still be upset if it was stolen, just in case that .1% got taken).
Declared value?
If you insure a package, you need to declare the value, so maybe that? The post office would have that information for all the mail that didn't arrive.
Presumably
These mail thieves are after checks which they take the name and routing data or alter and directly cash. So even a single stolen check is likely enough to put them over the $1200 limit.
But how do they know right after arrest if there are checks?
That's my confusion here - if they caught the guys when they had just stolen the mail, and without "checking" (haha) with everyone who had their mail stolen, how do they know it's not just a bunch of junk flyers or credit card offers or something?
Judging by the size of the pile
The USPS could estimate the stolen mail cost the senders more then $1200 in postage alone so the theft is from the post office, which still had custody before being delivered, and not the recipients themselves.
Even if the letters are worthless to the recipients, they have a real value to the post office and the people who sent them.
Mail Thieves
My guess is that the postal inspectors will bring them up on federal charges. That's because of a couple of things. The first one is they will go after these guys because of the amount of mail they were caught with. Another reason is that the postal service will want to make an example of these two because of the nationwide increase on mail theft and assaults and robberies of letter carriers. It will let any other miscreant know what will happen if they get caught.
This is all driven by the fact that the American public's erosion in the confidence in the security of the postal system is an attack on that system.
The actual term for it is "sanctity of the mail." It's all about restoring people's confidence in the system.
Give 'em 10 years, at least
The idea that you can't safely send a check through the mail undermines a basic tenet of American life. My wife had a check stolen and washed from the mailbox down the street. This isn't stealing a bag of junk mail, they are going to steal money from the unsuspecting people who mailed a check. Lock them up for a long time.