American

It seemed to be another helpful offer from your friendly U.S. Postal Service. When after-hours depositors sought to stuff their cash receipts into night depositories at a number of Dallas-area banks, they found the slots jammed and an official-looking notice that read: TEMPORARILY OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE UTILIZE THE U.S. MAILBOX FOR YOUR NIGHT DEPOSIT. Sure enough, one of those familiar curbside mail drops had been placed invitingly at hand to accept the money.

This mail, however, was not intended for prompt delivery to any bank. An alert police officer in the suburb of Carrollton spotted one such sign at a local bank, and after a search, another was found. Officers patiently staked out one of the sites. There they arrested Joe Ben Hunsaker III just after he had loaded one of the mailboxes into a pickup truck and was taking down an OUT OF ORDER sign. Alleging that he had used the innovative scam to steal $10,000 since early August, Postal inspectors said they would charge him with theft of the mailboxes and of the contents that trusting citizens had sent to the wrong destination.