Thieves display teamwork in brazen heist at California post office

A $150,000 reward is being offered in the search for a brazen crew of thieves caught on security video displaying teamwork while stealing carts full of mail from a Northern California post office.

The theft this month at a postal facility in San Bruno, about 12 miles south of San Francisco, is among a recent spike in post office thefts, robberies and assaults on postal workers in the Bay Area, authorities said.

Security footage released on Wednesday by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service of the theft at the San Bruno post office showed a trio of masked suspects ripping off several carts full of mail.

The theft unfolded around 5:30 a.m. local time on Aug. 5 when the security footage captured the crew backing up a blue SUV to a loading dock. The footage showed two of the thieves working in tandem to push a cart loaded with mail to their SUV, where an accomplice driver helped load the tubs of letters and packages into their vehicle.

The incident marked the second theft at the same San Bruno post office in the same week, officials said.

On July 30, a worker at the San Bruno post office was assaulted by a suspect, who fled the facility with several tubs of mail. A $150,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect was also offered in that incident, authorities said.

"If you recently visited the San Bruno Post Office or deposited mail into a collection box serviced by that office -- including collection boxes in the South San Francisco area -- your mail may have been affected," the San Bruno Police Department said in a statement released on Aug. 4.

Authorities urged residents to monitor their bank accounts, credit card accounts and other financial statements for unauthorized activity.

Police in the San Francisco suburb of Sunnyvale said officers arrested two people this month and recovered more than 80 pounds of suspected stolen mail swiped from mailboxes in several Bay Area cities, including Sunnyvale, San Jose, Mountain View, Menlo Park, Sausalito and Oakland.

"It gets traded in for something, drugs or cash or something, by the people who steal it," U.S. Postal Inspector Matthew Norfleet told ABC San Francisco station KGO-TV, referring to a possible motive in the recent rash of mail thefts.

The mail thefts are not just exclusive to the Bay Area.

In April, two former postal workers in New York pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell and fraudulently deposit $4.5 million in U.S. Treasury checks stolen from a U.S. postal facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

The suspects, both former employees of the JFK airport postal facility, were given prison sentences ranging from five to 12 years and ordered to pay more than $400,000 in restitution, officials said.

"These defendants undermined the public's trust in our mail system by stealing more than $4 million in Treasury checks meant for people who were expecting those funds," New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a statement following the sentencing of the mail thieves.