PERRYSBURG, Ohio — Over $70,000 in checks have been stolen from mailboxes at the Fort Meigs Business center in Perrysburg, and local business owners who work in the area say it's been happening for over a month.
Owners told WTOL 11 they didn't realize the checks were missing at first, rather thinking their customers were just late on payments. But when they reached out to their customers for answers, they were told not only had the checks been sent out, they had already been deposited.
"They were clearly not cashed or deposited by us, so we immediately filed a report with Perrysburg police," ExtraVirgin owner Greg Rufty said.
Rufty was just one of the business owners who set off the alarm when they realized their mailboxes had been burglarized.
Checks going back to Nov. 7 had been cashed, and Rufty said the thieves used technology to their advantage.
"These have all been electronically deposited," he said. "So in other words, a photo has been taken of the check...This was never put in front of a teller where an ID would have been asked for."
Design Entertainment, another member of the business park that has been affected, hosted police and FBI agents inside their property as they scrubbed through security footage looking for those responsible.
"So we tried to figure out who it was, and we were able to pin down that it was a white van that was coming up to the mailboxes and popping them open real quick and then getting in the car and getting away," owner Ben Remer said.
Law enforcement asked them to keep an eye out for the vehicle, but they never expected to see it happen again.
"But the next day at 2 o'clock, that white van pulled up again, and Jason ran out there with his phone camera and started snapping pictures," Remer said. "So he was able to get their faces, he took a picture inside the car, he took a picture of the license plate."
A spokesman with the Perrysburg Police Department told WTOL 11 that evidence has been helpful in their investigation. But as cases of check theft continue to rise across the nation, they say investigating these types of crimes can be slow.
"It does take some time," Det. Sgt. Jarrod Parsell said. "We're going through the court systems, we're getting the proper processes to make sure we do have a thorough investigation."
But with no end in sight yet, and more than $70,000 stolen from ExtraVirgin's mailbox alone, Rufty says the real victims are their customers, with their payments still due and payable.
"Their immediate restitution or best place of restitution is the banks, and then ultimately the banks would seek restitution if the folks are caught," Rufty said.
Perrysburg police said with the investigation still active, business owners should hand deliver any valuable mail, and should keep in contact with any business partners to make sure all checks made it to the right place.