Cluster mailbox break-ins repeatedly victimize residents from Butte County to the Capital City
By Ken Magri
Cluster mailboxes are those group postal boxes one sees in apartment complexes and along sidewalks in newer residential neighborhoods. Break-ins of these mailboxes, and mail theft in general, have been increasingly commonplace since the Covid-19 lockdowns. Now, it’s increasingly becoming a routine crime committed up and down the Central Valley from Chico to North Sacramento.
It gets reported on the local news, on social media networks and on neighborhood watch websites. Residents have been fighting back, installing security cameras and license plate-readers. They even record cluster mailbox break-ins and send evidence to law enforcement – but the thefts keep coming.
For victims of mail theft, the repeated break-ins are maddening. Some home owner associations, or HOAs, and neighbors are getting in on the counter-measures, sharing their own gathered evidence on the internet and hounding civic leaders to do more about it.
But the fight seems endless.
Where are cluster mailbox thefts happening?
Victims between Chico and Sacramento shared their stories with News & Review, which promised to use only their last names and withhold street numbers. The data was gathered on Facebook and Nextdoor.com and confirmed with emails.
North Sacramento residents reported regular break-ins in the 95834 and 95835 zip code area, which makes up both sides of the Interstate-5 at Highway 99 junction. One North Natomas neighborhood suffered 1,024 thefts in 2024 alone, as reported on the website keepingnorthnatomassafe.org.
South Natomas resident Karli H. told News & Review of her package thefts on Dorotio Way totaling $800. “The frustration lies in there not being a standard reporting process for accountability,” she said. “You call Sacramento Police Department and they direct you to online reporting which guarantees no follow-up, just a report time-stamp.”
Another Natomas resident reported that since November “a black SUV pulls up to our neighborhood at least once every week to just casually steal everyone’s mail… My husband wants to confront them but I don’t want him to get hurt.”
The cluster mailbox theft reports continue up the Highway 99 corridor.
An increase was reported last December by the Yuba City Police Department. Thieves were opening the mailboxes with forged keys during late evening hours.
On March 19, 2025, Yuba police arrested three people for possessing 200 pieces of mail stolen from the Regency Park neighborhood.
In Chico, cluster mailbox thefts have been reported at Ahwahnee Commons, Amanda Way, Amanecida Common, Bruce Road, Burnap Avenue, East and West 1st Avenue, Harrier Lane, Howard Drive, Humboldt Road, Jonell Lane, Lexington Drive, Lia Way, Manzanita Avenue, Netters Circle, Nord Avenue behind the university, Picholine Way, Potter Road, Rio Lindo Avenue, River Oaks, Robailey Drive, South Alamo Avenue, West 8th Avenue and West Shasta Avenue.
“It got so bad on River Oaks in Chico that the post office had to install a new unit as someone pried open the boxes,” reported Peggi R. on Nextdoor.com.
“It happened on South Alamo Avenue several times until a neighbor put a light and camera there,” commented Chico resident Michael Zeno on the same site.
Lisa W. and her spouse had their entire identity stolen due to a cluster mailbox theft. “The theft turned into a big identity theft ring,” explained Lisa. “I went to court, money was reinstated at Sierra Central Credit Union, where individuals impersonated us and cashed our checks,” she added. “Unfortunately, our case with Chico PD went nowhere.”
To the east, Cohasset has been hit several times. Further south, recent break-ins were reported at Lott Road in Durham, at West Oroville Avenue between Highways 99 and 70, and in the Heron Landing sub-division of Gridley.
Breaking into a cluster mailbox is easy
It is easy to break open a “master access lock” which opens all other mail slots. A YouTube video demonstrates the technique using a screwdriver and claw hammer. It takes less than 30 seconds.
But despite the ease, most break-ins are committed using stolen or forged pass keys from the US Postal Service, or USPS.
Last October, the Roseville Police arrested a suspect alleged to have struggled with a U.S. postal worker for his mailbox keys before robbing him at gunpoint, according to a FOX40 news story and confirmed on the Roseville Police Facebook page.
Those stolen keys opened all cluster mailboxes in the 95747 Zip code, northeast of Roseville between highways 99 and 65.
All mailbox locks and keys come from the same manufacturer, CompX Security Products in Illinois. Although they are officially approved by the USPS, they are not considered high-security locks.
A series of new stronger F-Series cluster mailboxes are advertised to be safer and more secure because “should the box be damaged, the property owner is required to repair or replace the box immediately,” according to the US Post Box Company. But a USPS inspector admitted to News & Review that if someone wants to break into these newer mailboxes they can find a way.
In the Roseville arrest, the stolen keys were recovered. But could duplicate keys have been made in between the robbery and arrest? Absolutely.
Many of these lock and key designs can be forged with thin metal strips, a Dremel power tool and a jewelers saw. The SPD released an evidence photo showing diagrams of postal keys, forged keys and forging equipment.
“As locksmiths, the only keys we are legally unable to copy are keys stamped “Property of US Government,” said Michael Meyer, Owner of All About Locks in Chico. “Most individual mailbox keys associated with the community mailboxes are not stamped that way.”
Meyer said that the master key used by postal carriers “is a proprietary high security keyway that only the Post Office has access to. If someone asked me to copy that key I would confiscated it.”
A Natomas town hall with frustrated residents
Sacramento District 1 Councilmember Lisa Kaplan held a town hall for the Natomas neighborhoods on February 26th to discuss mail theft after a mailbox on Brookstone Street in Natomas was repeatedly hit, even under surveillance and after evidence was sent to law enforcement.
The councilmember said she has had meetings with the UPSP and is demanding they change their cluster mailbox locks. “This rests solely on the US Postal Service,” Kaplan told KCRA News after the town hall. ”They are doing nothing.”
Kaplan brought Sacramento Police Captain Neil Cybulski along to help answer questions about better mail security and give tips on collecting better evidence. She later released a point-by-point recap of the community meeting, listing follow-up meetings and action items she intends to take.
But several Natomas residents expressed dissatisfaction about the town hall on social networks.
“At her meeting she shared no plan. She had not one action item,” wrote Jonathan Burke on Facebook.”She must require that law enforcement actually respond to these reports of crime.”
“The entire town hall felt very dystopian,” posted Jennifer Chawla on the same site.” Selected questions from comment cards were redundant. I heard no voices other than the four hosts seated at the front.”
Hampton Village HOA Board President Ed Perez told News & Review, “It was pretty clear that the coordination we thought was going to be in place was not there. The postal inspector didn’t even send a representative…even though [the councilmember’s] announcement flyer noted they were going to be present.”
Perez said his HOA was asked by Kaplan’s staff to move an information table set up outside the town hall. He also mentioned the pre-selected questions, saying, “most of the answers were ‘let me get back to you,’ or just flat out wrong with no way to do a follow-up.”
Councilmember Kaplan’s chief of staff, Misty Alafranji, reached out to News & Review on her own, so we asked about these criticisms.
“There are 2-3 folks that no matter what efforts are being taken just aren’t satisfied and sadly, want to be in opposition regardless. It’s the few that try to be the voice of the majority,” said Alafranji.
“Typically that’s what media grabs on to because it’s salacious,” Alafanji added, “but we were pleased to have had five media outlets at our meeting, per our request, who reported accurately on the efforts that Councilmember Kaplan and our team have been taking for a long time.”
But another District 1 constituent, Romer Cristobal, also felt the meeting was orchestrated to limit dialogue while appearing to take action.
Cristobal told News & Review that Kaplan’s staff stood behind Perez, disrupting the spot where a Sacramento TV news crew was interviewing him. “One reporter had to intervene and tell Kaplan’s staff to stop interrupting an interview,” said Cristobal.
“The main issue in their mind is that people are not reporting break-ins enough, which is BS,” said Perez. “We have a lot of data that [shows] people have been giving them everything they need to arrest and prosecute.”
Do law enforcement agencies coordinate?
News & Review asked Sacramento Police Captain Cybulski if any new actions were undertaken since he appeared at the town hall, and if the SPD coordinated mail theft data with other law enforcement agencies up the valley.
Sergeant Daniel Wiseman responded for Cybulski.
“Regarding actions taken since the town hall, SPD continues to prioritize this issue through ongoing investigations, enforcement efforts, and partnerships with key agencies,” said Wiseman. “We wouldn’t publicly disclose specific tactics or coordination details as that could obviously compromise the investigative process.”
“As for coordination with Yuba City, Oroville, and Chico, information sharing occurs through established law enforcement networks, and we communicate as needed to identify trends, suspects, and enforcement opportunities,” said Wiseman.
For its part, the USPS considers their responsibility to be completed once the mail is delivered. “We are constantly working with the post office in trying to develop good security,” said Jonathan Lanning, US Postal Inspector for the North Valley External Crimes team, which covers the Chico and Sacramento areas.
“As we develop more security measures, there are always bad actors out there trying to figure out other ways to get around it, so we are rolling out new higher security mailboxes…and they’re not as easy to get into.”
US Representative Ami Bera (D, Sacramento) initiated an audit of the USPS last July “to help those in the Sacramento region move towards curing the rampant mail theft and CBU vandalism they are experiencing.”
Three months later the USPS announced that they had officially begun that audit, which is ongoing.
Cluster mailbox theft is nationwide
Last July, TIME.com wrote about mail theft as an increasing national crime since 2020. The article mentioned retired Postal Police Officer (PPO) Edna Sepulveda who regularly staked out public mailboxes in high mail theft areas, making on the spot arrests.
But in 2020 PPOs were told they could no longer work the streets, as revealed in a 2023 lawsuit filed in D.C. District Court by the Postal Police Officers Union.
“Now the criminals have no fear,” Sepulveda said.
A CBS News report in 2024 said that lax supervision of USPS keys contributes to the problem. Repeated audits showed Los Angeles “workers and supervisors failing to follow basic, long-standing regulations meant to protect the keys.”
What can individuals do?
According to Perez, seven Natomas HOAs have purchased and installed license plate readers. The largest neighborhood has 24 of them. “We were the first HOA to employ nine of them, in 2021,” said Perez. “We created an online portal for our homeowners to report it.”
That online portal designed by Natomas residents is called keepingnorthnatomassafe.org. It updates information on mail theft, uploads evidence of crimes in action and gives instructions on how to partner with police and the USPS for greater security.
Residents with cluster mailboxes are advised to check their mail daily. Do not leave mail overnight. Avoid sending checks, cash or gift cards through the mail. Sign up for the USPS “informed delivery” which sends notifications when the mail has arrived. Finally, if a theft occurs, make an online report through a local law enforcement agency and upload any gathered evidence.
Perez also urged residents in cities and neighborhoods further north to coordinate with the Natomas neighborhoods. He invited them to access the keepingnorthnatomassafe.org website and share information on these mail crimes. “The website is the way to reach us,” he said.
“We’ll be more than happy to help because we are trying to channel that energy so people don’t get apathetic.”
Kaplan’s team operates in a world of misinformation, disconnected from the harsh realities that many residents face. The claim that only “2 or 3” people are dissatisfied is not just false—it’s an outright lie. The truth is, countless residents feel unheard, ignored, and abandoned.
We find it disturbing that Kaplan’s representative deliberately misled CN&R and SN&R, pretending they were the only ones who invited the media. The fact is, KCRA interviewed Ed Perez before the so-called “Townhall” because he personally reached out to them—proving yet again that Kaplan’s camp manipulates the narrative to suit their agenda.
But perhaps most alarming is the blatant suppression of voices in the district. Kaplan’s staff choose who they help, and if you’re a crime victim and a person of color—good luck. One of her staffers went so far as to intentionally disrupt a media interview with a homeowner association president, a person of color, making noise behind them to interfere. It took a journalist—not Kaplan’s team—to put a stop to the childish, disgraceful behavior.
This is not leadership. This is bullying. And it is a direct attempt to silence and intimidate those brave enough to speak out. Residents deserve honesty, fairness, and a representative who fights for everyone—not just a handpicked few.
Team Kaplan’s actions speak volumes—they dismiss anyone who dares to bring a true account of the problem to light. Their collaboration only extends to those willing to follow their narrowly approved script. Is this really the accountability and openness we deserve?