Salina Police are investigating a series of incidents in which checks have been stolen from mailboxes and then repurposed to allow the perpetrator to acquire money from people’s bank accounts.

Salina Police Captain Gary Hanus explained that people innocently put bill payments in their mailboxes for postal carriers to pick up, but the red flags that alert the postal carriers that mail is in the boxes to be picked up also alerts thieves that there might be checks in the mailboxes. Hanus stopped short of warning people to not put outgoing mail in their mailboxes, but he did encourage people to be more cautious about what they put in their mailboxes.

Currently, Salina Police are investigating three instances of checks being stolen from mailboxes within the past few weeks:

• One in the 200 block of South Ninth
• One in the 600 block of South Santa Fe
• One in the 1400 block of Meyer Drive

Hanus said someone is stealing checks from mailboxes and washing out the information written on the checks. The thieves then add new information, such as amounts, to the checks and cash them. So far, they have been able to collect more than $3,000 from people’s accounts, he said.