Reader report sent by CW:
Around 7 am on June 21, 2025, someone with the master key broke into the USPS mail boxes for our townhome complex and stole everyone’s mail.
This incident was not the first time our cluster box unit (CBU) had been broken into. Around 6:30 am on November 27, 2024, someone with a master key broke into our CBU, but during that break-in, an image of the mail thief was captured by a door camera.
After the second incident, we decided to reach out to the U.S. Postal Service, to ask if our CBU could be re-keyed.
A supervisor at the West Seattle branch informed me that it would be impossible to re-key our CBU because all CBUs sharing the same zip code have the same master key, and all of the CBUs in our area would need to be re-keyed.
The supervisor recommended calling and filing a report with the US Postal Inspection Service at 877-876-2455, option 3.
There’s also an option of filing the report online at mail theft.uspis.gov
While searching the Internet for information, we learned why it’s important to report stolen mail to the US Postal Inspection Service.
There are over 139,000 mail collection bins and 16.5 million CBUs in use across the country, and the U.S. Postal Service is planning to strategically replace only 49,000 traditional locks with higher-security electronic locks, in areas identified as high postal-crime areas.
With USPS master key fetching $1,000 to $7,000 on the dark web, we don’t see mail theft going away any time soon.
We wanted to share the above information with the other residents of West Seattle so they would know whom to call if their mail is stolen.
If you have any tips for the USPIS, CW says the confirmation numbers they received for these two incidents are 38105618 and 38105621.
