By JON BAKER

LINCOLN  ---  John Mongelli believes there’s a mail-pilfering problem in the Old Louisquisset Pike area of town, and he says he has a good reason for thinking so: On Sunday, March 30, he discovered someone had stolen a mailed money order worth over $450 from his mailbox, located on his property at 3 Anne Drive.

In a recent e-mail to Town Administrator T. Joseph Almond and all five town councilors, Mongelli stated that “an off-duty police detective/neighbor collected the mail blowing in the wind … and he noted a lot of mailboxes were open.”
Mongelli added that other affected addresses included a couple on Old Louisquisset Pike and a few from Anne Drive and Barbette Drive, and all had mail opened and/or taken from boxes on that date.
“To the best we can tell in discussion with neighbors, it happened Saturday night (or Sunday morning),” Mongelli wrote.
“It is a quality of life issue. Some have summarized it is due to the increased Massachusetts traffic with a propensity (to commit) embezzlement and fraud.”
Mongelli recounted the circumstances under which missing missives recently turned up.
“(The detective), his wife and daughter were coming back from church, and I guess his daughter said, ‘Dad, what’s all that paper blowing in the street?’” Mongelli said. “They were out in their Sunday best, chasing down mail … blowing from the gas station (on the corner of the pike and Breakneck Hill Road) to Twin River Road.
“I don’t know who did this, but I wish I knew,” Mongelli said. “All I know is that someone opened the envelope (containing the money order) right on site, took it out and pocketed it. Whoever did it left the envelope there … This hasn’t happened to me before, or my neighbors, but this is serious.
“I went down to talk with my neighbor at his house on Barbette that Sunday afternoon, and I asked him what happened, and how much mail he picked up, and he said, ‘A lot.’ He told me it was a small stack, and another neighbor told me had found a bunch of mail in his driveway.”
When asked about the incident, Police Chief Brian Sullivan offered, “Lt. Christopher Tuffy spoke with Mr. Mongelli, and the person who sent the money order, and the lieutenant got the serial number of it.
“Our detective unit is working on this case, in conjunction with the postal inspector (Brian Hendrix).”
In the meantime, Mongelli has chosen to take matters into his own hands, and suggested his neighbors do the same.
“I bought a locking mailbox,” he said. “I bought it online — on eBay — that Sunday afternoon. It’s something where you get one free pull, and after that, it locks. It looks like any other regular rural mailbox. This is what it’s come to.
“To be honest with you, I don’t even let my kids play in the yard anymore, near the pike, because of the Massachusetts traffic … Oh, yeah, it’s definitely a theft of mail, and I don’t like it one bit. I reported it to the U.S. Postal Service online, and they sent me a claim number, so I gather they’re looking into it.”
When asked if he’ll ever receive the money owed to him, Mongelli said only, “The USPS doesn’t cancel money orders. If it’s not cashed within a specified period of time, it can be reissued. We’ll see if that happens.”
Just Monday, a Manville woman drove to police headquarters to report that someone had tampered with her mailbox. In fact, the lock to the box door had been broken. She also told Patrolman Russell Enos that she had received a letter from a friend and found it, but the envelope was missing. She also wondered if other mail items had been stolen.
Enos advised her to report the incident to the USPS, and according to the report, the victim said she knew of the process.
“Since that (previous) incident was brought to my attention, I was aware this was happening,” Sullivan said. “I noticed that (Manville) report, but also that it was in a different section of town. There’s no indication that they’re related.
“Of course, any time you see this, you’re concerned when people break into mailboxes, locked or not,” he added. “We’re aware of this, and we’re paying attention to it.”