CHICAGO — Several Northwest side residents are disturbed after surveillance video captures a man entering their condo building and stuffing mail down his pants before leaving.
Only residents with a key can enter this condo building in 2800 block of North Pulaski Avenue in Chicago’s Belmont Gardens neighborhood, but somehow a man, who residents say they aren’t familiar with got inside with a key around 1:45 a.m. on Friday.
The man in the video, who happens to be barefoot, casually enters the entrance of the Belmont Gardens condo building. Once inside, he immediately goes to the row of six mailboxes and uses a key opening all of the mailboxes at one time.
The suspect then looks inside and removes mail from three of the compartments. He closes the mailboxes up and before walking outside stuffs the mail down the front of his shorts.
Resident Ramon Cotto lives in the building and said a police report was filed Friday morning.
“It seemed to me like he had a universal key and you know by the rattle of the keys it seemed like he had a lot of keys,” Cotto said. “I was like ok seemed like it was not his first rodeo he knew exactly what he was doing we have never seen the guy in the neighborhood before.”
According to the office of the postal inspector, mail theft and using a stolen or fake postal key are federal crimes.
Those charged with mail theft can face up to 5 years in jail and people charged with using a fake or stolen postal key can face up to 10 years behind bars.