Skills like lock picking and illicit key duplication are rarely used in thefts. The reason is simple, it is a lot quicker & easier to simply kick the door in or pry open a window. Also the thief doesn’t need to try to hide the fact that here has been a break-in, the missing TV & stereo speaks volumes.
If someone is stealing mail for identify theft purposes, however, the crooks don’t want anyone to know that things are missing. If, for example, your locked mailbox had been pried open you would immediately suspect that checks or credit card information may have been stolen and cancel them. That is why ‘arrow keys’ are the Holy Grail to mail thieves. What are arrow keys? They are the master keys the U.S. Post Office uses to open all of the locked mail boxes along a certain route (a confiscated set is shown above). The post office tries to keep close track of the keys (they are supposed to be checked out and back in by Postal workers each time) but that hasn’t stopped criminals from obtaining the keys in various ways.
In fact, the methods used to get arrow keys range from as simple as a Postal employee gone bad (like the rural mail carrier who sold stolen postal keys) to sophisticated methods such as the ones used by Joseph Lau.
It appears that sometime around 2005 Mr. Lau graduated from using simple mailbox ‘fishing’ methods (using a sticky block of wood on a wire to retrieve letters from a drop box) to creating his own arrow key production technique. The method he used was to secretly video tape Postal Workers opening mail boxes along their routes. He would then enlarge still photos of the key and use that to cut a home-made duplicate. In all, Mr. Lau produced 23 counterfeit arrow keys and obtained almost $500,000 in stolen checks before being caught.
Mr. Lau is not alone, however, in the ‘custom’ arrow key creation business. A quick search of the Internet turned up several others, including Wendy Trail in 1999, Steven Gregory Freitas, also in 1999 (after a similar arrest in 1996), Craig Alden St. Clair in 2002 and Michael Hannah in 2006.
Barry’s ‘Must Read’ Blog
Barry ‘The Key’ Wels is a co-founder and noted leader of the ground breaking TOOOL.NL locksport organization. Based in the Netherlands, TOOOL not only practices lock picking as a sport, but also actively researches locks & lock security. This places Barry on the cutting edge of lock picking & bypass techniques, as well as, giving him access to locks & devices that the average person would never see. Fortunately for us, Barry takes us along in his journey at his blog, Black Bag.
Although I have mentioned several times the most popular lock picking forum online today, LockPicking101.com, here are several others that I have come across: