A Henrico County, Virginia, man pleaded guilty this week to robbing blue mailboxes outside the Westhampton Post Office in Richmond on Dec. 19, 2022.
Earlier incidents of mail theft from the blue USPS boxes in Richmond in December 2022 led local law enforcement to conduct surveillance of the boxes at the Westhampton office, including on Dec. 19.
Officers saw a gray GMC vehicle with Virginia plates driven by Stephen Booker, 28, pull up to the blue boxes in the post office parking lot. Two people exited the car, emptied the mail from the blue boxes into a trash bag, and drove off.
When police tried to perform a traffic stop on Booker, he initially pulled over before choosing to flee, leading officers in a high-speed chase. While law enforcement could not apprehend Booker or his unnamed passenger that day, they would later arrest him at his home.
A search of Booker’s residence turned up checks and credit cards belonging to other people.
Booker is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 13 and faces up to five years in prison on the single count of mail theft. The Justice Department did not specify whether any accomplices have been apprehended or charged in relation to the theft.
Mail theft is on the rise in the D.C. metropolitan area and nationwide, a trend that authorities are in turn trying to quash. As of May 13, there had been 25,000 instances of high-volume mail theft in fiscal 2023, along with 305 robberies of U.S. Postal Service mail carriers.
One such incident was the gunpoint robbery of a mail carrier in the D.C. suburb of Olney, Maryland, on April 26. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service announced Tuesday a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction in that case.
Nationally, the USPS is rolling out 12,000 new, hardened blue boxes along with 49,000 electronic locks to replace the arrow keys that open those boxes, in the hopes of stemming the rise of mail theft.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.