Crime & Safety

Mailbox Bandit Accused of Stealing From Westporters

A Hong Kong man has been arrested for stealing and altering checks from the Wilton Post Office to the tune of around $90,000.

Wilton's infamous mailbox bandit, it turns out, is also an international fugitive and perhaps even a gangster.

Police say that Joseph Mo Pun Lau, 51, of Hong Kong was arrested on July 9 jointly by Wilton detetctives and U.S. Postal Inspectors on Long Island. Lau is believed to be the mastermind behind a scheme that involved stealing checks from the Wilton Post Office dropbox and creating counterfeit replicas, which were then attempted to be cashed or redeemed at banks around the tri-state area.

He allegedly stole a total of 48 checks from 38 different residents of Norwalk, Wilton and Westport, according to the Norwalk Hour.

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"A lot of legwork and a lot of man hours went into actually locating him because he didn't tend to stay in any location for very long," said Lieutenant Don Wakeman of the Wilton Police Department.

Police were able to learn of Lau's identity through a combination of viewing various surveillance photos and footage and speaking with other postal inspectors and banks around the region. Wakeman said the most helpful leads came from a postal inspector in Pennsylvania, who was able to "give [police] a tremendous amount of information" since Lau was arrested for similar bank fraud charges there in 2005.

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Wakeman said Lau allegedly gained access to Wilton's dropbox by making a key to it.

"He conducted his own surveillance of mail carriers (at the Wilton Post Office) opening the drop boxes and through that surveillance he was able to fashion a key of his own to unlock the boxes," Wakeman said.

Police are still confused as to how, exactly, Lau was able to create a key to the drop boxes. Wakeman said those keys are very tightly controlled by mail carriers and unique to each post office. When asked if Lau may have had help from someone inside the post office, Wakeman said that could still be the case but they had no direct leads.

"As we went along, that was always a thought," he said. "We had a number of victims whose mail was ultimately stolen from inside the post office or who put it inside their own mailbox at their houses. But none of the information we have so far has lead us to believe that there's anyone inside the post office that he worked with. How we explain how some of the other mail went missing is unknown."

All told, the scheme affected some , including 48 individual checks. Lau allegedly visited banks throughout the region and had set up fictitious accounts at Wachovia Bank, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. He reportedly visited branches in Wilton to make deposits, as well as other area towns.

Lau is not new to the world of mail theft. Wakeman said he was arrested in 2005 for similar bank fraud and was deported back to Hong Kong in 2007. As a result, Lau is being charged with one count of illegally re-entering the U.S. in addition to the four counts of bank fraud and three counts of theft of mail he currently faces.

The Stamford Advocate is reporting that Lau is also believed to be the head of a Chinese crime gang operating out of New York. Wakeman said, however, that he was not sure where that information came from and that the Wilton PD's information indicated only that Lau was acting alone.

Wakeman added that the bandit's victims are currently in the process of filing fraud affidavits with each of their respective banks and are likely to be reimbursed for the crimes. However, "the true victims end up being the various banks," he said, who may be out the money unless insurance covers it.

Read the Advocate article: Hong Kong man charged with stealing dozens of Wilton checks.


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