Two suspected thieves stole thousands of pieces of mail and a lot of Tulsa I D's

Friday, March 25th 2005, 10:48 am

By: News On 6

Two Tulsa men now face federal charges after postal inspectors say the men stole mail from mailboxes at Tulsa homes, businesses and apartments, then made counterfeit checks, opened checking accounts and lined their pockets with about $150,000.

News on 6 crime reporter Lori Fullbright says when people put their bills in their mailboxes and put their red flags up, it tells the letter carrier there's something in there to pick up, but it also tells thieves thereâ€™s something in there to steal.

US Postal inspectors say that's exactly what Jimmy Dowling[pictured right] and Walter Ewing[pictured left] did, beginning last fall. Records show the men got out of jail last August for similar crimes and within a month, they're accused of stealing 4,000 to 6,000 pieces of mail, many of which contained checks.

US Postal Inspector Scott West: "For Tulsa, this is a very large case for the amount of mail recovered." Now, the post office is mailing the stolen mail back to its rightful owners and telling all the victims to check with their bank and credit reports to see if they're out any money.

So, the best advice is don't mail your bills or even birthday cards with checks in them from your mailbox because they longer it sits in there, the better chance there is someone will steal it.

It's also a good time to beware of the many scams that are mailed to you, like this letter that told a Tulsa woman she'd won $500,000, so long as she sent them a $5 processing fee. Virginia was suspicious so mailed it to me to check it out and she was right, it's a scam. "My daddy always said if it's too good to be true, it's not true. Then, I thought if they sent it to me, they probably sent it to other people so I sent it to you to warn other people."

If you ever win anything legitimate, they won't charge you a single penny to collect it. This letter is another current scam you need to ignore. The basic story is a person from a foreign country says a loved one has died and they discovered millions in that person's account. They say they want to invest the money internationally and want you to open an account here in the states and for your trouble you get a percentage of the money, in this case, 30 percent of $86-million or around $25-million, it may sound tempting, but it's a lie, throw it away.