Update: Stolen Mail Report

We just contacted KELO, a local news station about a report they did this evening about our mail that disappeared in 2007. The reporter will be sharing our story sometime tomorrow.

The reason for the follow up is because the news station was led to believe that the mail theft victims got their stuff back when not everyone did. All we got was empty packages.

** Here is the link to our original story:

http://thereevesreport.blogspot.com/2010/05/where-do-missing-packages-go-mail-theft.html

** Here's the news report:

Stolen Mail Found Years After Being Sent

By Ben Dunsmoor
Published: May 5, 2010, 5:54 PM

SIOUX FALLS, SD - Thousands of people who sent a letter or package that never made it to its destination are now getting them back.

Last June, Michael Dallas Andersen of Garretson was sent to prison for stealing that mail. Andersen pleaded guilty to one count of stealing and opening mail last year. He admitted to taking the mail between 2006 and 2008. But it wasn't until after the case was closed that authorities found the more than 30,000 pieces of mail Andersen had stolen.

Packages are being returned to sender by the postal service, not because they had the wrong address but because they just found the mail that is nearly four years old.

"What we've been trying to do is find a way to get this mail back to its rightful owners," Pete Nowacki of the U.S. Postal Service said.

Officials with the Postal Service say Michael Andersen worked as a private contractor who would haul the mail from the Sioux Falls processing center to the airport. For two years, Andersen took thousands of parcels and stocked them away in an abandoned storage garage. Authorities didn't find the garage until this past February, eight months after Andersen was sentenced for the crime.

"There were materials that were being sent to somebody that had been separated from the package. So we've been doing what we can to sort of do a little bit of detective work trying to match this up and trying to make sure it gets back with the correct package," Nowacki said.

After finding the mail in February, federal investigators sifted through it, and now it is starting to be mailed back.

"The type of service we normally provide wasn't provided here and there's nothing we can do to make up for that, but what we can do is everything we can in our power to try and help people get some sort of closure, some sort of peace of mind that they know at least they've gotten their piece back. They know it's not out there missing somewhere," Nowacki said.

Andersen was sentenced last June to one year in prison and ordered to pay $2,600 in restitution.

KELO & this story

Latest UPDATE:

Today, KELO ran the update that included our packages that were caught in the mail theft that took place here, in Sioux Falls.

** Here's the report and a video:

Stolen Mail Returned To Woman

Posts By Ben Dunsmoor
Published: May 6, 2010, 6:12 PM


SIOUX FALLS, SD - A Sioux Falls woman is upset over her stolen mail that hasn't been returned. The mail in question was stolen between August 2006 and August 2008.

A couple of torn up envelopes is all Brenda Reeves has to show for the jewelry she sold on e-Bay two-and-a-half years ago.

"There I sat thinking, 'Gosh, I wonder what was in there,'" Reeves said.

The two small envelopes had fashion jewelry; as for this large package, she's still trying to figure that out.

"December of 2007. That's almost two and a half years ago. That's a long time," Reeves said.

The confusion started when the packages showed up on her doorstep this week. She wasn't expecting anything, but when she opened up the parcels and found ripped up envelopes and a letter from the U.S. Postal Service saying her mail was stolen two years ago, she was speechless.

"Wasn't too sure what to think and then I opened them and then I was horrified," Reeves said.

She wasn't just horrified that her mail was stolen, but that this case had gone on for more than three years and she didn't know anything about it until this week.

"Somebody got away with our merchandise and we had unhappy customers evidently because they didn't get their merchandise and I'm questioning why were we never contacted," Reeves said.

Michael Andersen was sentenced to one year in prison last year and ordered to pay $2,600 in restitution. But by looking at her torn up envelopes, Reeves thinks Andersen stole, stored and never delivered a lot more mail than that.

"If you've got 30,000 pieces of mail missing and I have three right here that had nothing in it, how many others didn't have anything in it?" Reeves said.

The Postal Service didn't find the garage where Andersen kept the mail until February of this year, eight months after Andersen was sentenced.

Officials say they're doing their best to match up items that were found in the garage with the empty packages that were also in the garage. But with 30,000 pieces of mail, it's a big job to take on.

KELO & this story



The comment about the number of packages and how many may be missing their contents was made in regards to the restitution that was set in the legal case in this story. It just seems like an awfully low amount considering how much merchandise this person likely made off with. How many others got nothing but empty envelopes or boxes back? How much should the restitution have really been set at?

Also, if the missing items are sitting in some bin somewhere in the USPS system, what are they going to do with it? They never contacted us to see what might have belonged in the packages. It doesn't seem like USPS did all that they could to match up the contents to the empty packages.

We will be contacting USPS about this situation to see what else may be done.