The U.S. Postal Inspection Service division that includes Stockton and its surrounding areas has had some of the highest reports of mail theft in the country in the last three years, says U.S. Rep. Josh Harder.
He said the mounting number of crimes spurred him to take action.
“We’ve had an enormous amount of mail theft, especially in a number of different places in Stockton,” Harder said during a recent interview at a Starbucks on March Lane. And these aren’t random criminals, he added: “These are all organized gangs.”
He said one of the problems centers on cluster mailboxes, those centralized mail niches often found in some of Stockton’s nicer single-family housing tracts.
Cluster mailboxes make delivery easier for postal carriers. They also make easy targets for thieves.
The entire cluster of mailboxes can be opened with a single key. Those keys can be stolen or copied illegally, granting unauthorized access to multiple internal mail slots containing everything from credit cards and checks to prescription drugs. Stolen mail can also contain personal data that can be used in identity theft crimes.
Harder, D-Tracy, said more than 200 constituents have contacted his office about the problem. Reports have included stolen packages and checks, ransacked or destroyed cluster mailboxes and ongoing identity fraud stemming from mail theft.
Nationally, mail theft has risen dramatically since 2023, with nearly 1 million complaints reported in the last three years.
“We have seen mail theft increasing,” Jonathan Lanning, a USPS inspector based in Sacramento, told Stocktonia. The national surge dates back to 2020 and includes targets in the San Francisco district, where Stockton is located.
Last month, Harder introduced a bill in the House that would increase penalties for mail theft.
“One of the problems is that mail theft is a federal crime, but it is the lowest possible priority” when it comes to prosecution, Harder said. Federal prosecutors typically chase bigger fish: narcotics rings, smugglers, embezzlers and the like.
The proposed measure aims to crack down on the crime by creating a coordinator in U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country to make sure mail thieves are brought to justice.
Stockton has been hit especially hard. Local police say that between April and July of this year, they received reports of 22 to 36 mail-theft incidents each month. One such report involved cluster mailboxes in Weston Ranch.
In February, Stockton police arrested Dmarcus Javis, 32, and Jessica Ta, 35, on suspicion of mail theft. A search of Ta’s residence uncovered counterfeit mailbox keys and hundreds of pieces of stolen mail, credit cards and checks, authorities said in a news release. The pair were booked on 11 felony counts and 18 misdemeanor charges connected to a California law that makes it a crime to possess someone else’s personal information with intent to defraud them.
The arrests came after Councilmember Michele Padilla alerted officers to a social media post showing a photo of a red Kia Soul believed to have been used in the north Stockton thefts. Detectives were able to link Javis and Ta to the car from the photo, which showed a partial license plate number.
In Sacramento County, the District Attorney’s Office created a Mail Theft Task Force, including a prosecutor dedicated to the effort, after authorities reported about 300 incidents from 2025 through February, FOX40 reported. Using stolen master keys, thieves looted cluster mailboxes in Natomas, Rancho Cordova and Folsom, police said.
In January, Roseville police responded to a report that an entire cluster unit of mailboxes had been stolen. Video captured a suspect leaving the scene with the cluster mailbox stand protruding from the car’s trunk. When one of the suspects — identified as 30-year-old Michael Johnson of Sacramento — was arrested at his residence, police found the cluster mailbox unit being used as a nightstand.
The U.S. Postal Service launched Project Safe Delivery in 2023 to try to reduce both mail-carrier robberies and mailbox thefts. Among the suggestions was higher-security locks on cluster mailboxes.
Harder said electronic locks are one solution. But ideally, he’d like to see the postal service move to mail delivery at each individual home, banishing cluster boxes. Though it would mean more legwork for postal carriers, Harder says broader home delivery would ultimately be safer.
“This is a real public safety and health issue,” he said.