WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The cluster mailbox outside Terry Murphy's marketing firm was his financial lifeline. It's where he'd receive checks from clients all over the U.S.
And then last fall, in the overnight hours, thieves armed with a master key opened the cluster box, stole his mail, and forged the checks ripping off him and the companies he does business with.
"We came very close to losing clients over this. If we lost clients, we lost clients, I would have had to lay people off," Murphy, the CEO of strategic marketing, said. "We have had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of checks washed that were supposed to end up in this office. I'm sure there's been millions of dollars across the country."
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The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network reports the number of check fraud cases doubled from 2021-2022. That surge is attributed in part to a rise in mailbox theft.
"I know of 10 individual incidents that I have witnessed," Bob MacDonald, the CEO of Omni Telecommunications, whose business is in a West Palm Beach office park, said.
MacDonald witnessed videos from cameras his company installed and pointed at the cluster mailbox outside his office.
"They're driving some really nice cars," MacDonald said with a laugh as he recounted what he saw on the videos of a mailbox theft. "They're driving BMWs and Mercedes. Generally, it's a different vehicle every time."
WPTV Investigative Reporter Dave Bohman asked MacDonald if it surprised him that these thieves drove luxury cars.
"No, it doesn't because of the amount of money they're getting away with,” he said.
"It's different cars that show up to steal every night," Murphy, whose office is about 4 miles away from MacDonald's firm, said.
Murphy blames the U.S. Postal Service for its system of master keys used by postal workers.
The Postal Service confirmed one key opens all the cluster mailboxes in a given region.
"I would think the first thing is they would want to change the locks on those boxes," MacDonald said.
MacDonald has been critical of the postal service for not changing its system at cluster mailboxes.
"There are solutions that are really easy. Change the locks would be the obvious one," Murphy added.
He also believes postal carriers should bring the mail directly to businesses and do away with the cluster mailboxes.
"I know people are frustrated with the key system, and we do know that sometimes it has been a problem, but we have done things to prevent the mail from being stolen from that master key system," U.S. Postal Inspection Service fraud investigator Blanca Alvarez said. "I can't go into detail, but we're doing things like trying to change the locks. I know the customers want immediate action and we are acting."
Alvarez points to the Postal Inspection Service's work with Delray Beach police in the recent arrest of five men charged with robbing mailboxes with a stolen master key and check washing.
She added the Postal Service plans to replace the master keys it labels "antiquated" with electronic locks at nearly 50,000 cluster mailboxes around the U.S.
But the agency hasn't said which clusters will get the electronic locks, or when the changes will happen for the office parks that want them.
And to many of the thousands of businesses that get mail delivered to cluster mailboxes, owners feel vulnerable as long as their postal lifelines can be opened by a master key.
"We try to protect the sanctity of the mail," Alvarez said. "And we're working on a daily basis to address the issue and make sure these criminals are caught so they don't do it again."
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Alvarez said businesses that rely on cluster boxes need to empty their mailboxes at the end of every day.
Murphy has given up on the postal service. He now sends pre-paid package envelopes to his clients for sending their checks.
"UPS and FedEx, so that we can actually know that our checks are going to get here without being stolen," he said.
And many other businesses won't feel their mail is safe until the master key system is phased out.
