Mailbox Thieves Strew Confusion in North County : Crime: Checks, credit cards, income tax refunds have been snatched for spending sprees while personal mail gets tossed.

A gang of thieves operating along California 78 recently has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from countless mailboxes across North County, postal inspectors announced Friday.

Inspectors say the loose-knit gang, nicknamed the “Route 78 Bandits,” first hit the area in November and since has splintered into a number of groups.

To date, they said, it is impossible to tell exactly how many people have been victimized by the group, which pries open clusters of mailboxes and drop-off sites in upper-middle-class neighborhoods to steal checks, credit cards and anything else of value.

“There have been thousands and thousands and thousands of victims,” said David Fast, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in San Diego. “And they include not only the mail recipients, but the banks and other areas of commerce. Everybody’s a victim, that’s safe to say.”

The thieves have stolen federal tax return and stock dividend checks, personal checks and credit cards, and used them for spending sprees.

In most cases, the only thing left behind is the junk mail.

“These people have caused a plethora of both big and little problems--from people getting late-payment fees they can’t explain to the loss of negotiable bonds that now may never be cashed,” Fast said.

“This crime spree has disrupted commerce in no small way.”

The most frustrating aspect of the crimes, detectives say, is that many of the victims do not realize they have been struck until weeks or months later when they receive bills from creditors and late-payment notices from banks.

One Encinitas man recently learned that a Visa gold card stolen several months ago from his mailbox was used to buy more than $15,000 in merchandise in local stores.

After taking the card, the thieves sent a change-of-address form to the credit card company, so the victim never received notices about the large charges. But laws severely limit the credit-card holder’s liability.

The thieves discard or destroy personal letters and correspondence, sometimes throwing them out the window as they drive down the freeway.

Unopened letters have been found along the roadside as far away as Ramona, and authorities say they are doing their best to return what mail they can.

“These people have no morals--absolutely none. They’re lowlifes,” said San Diego County Sheriff’s Detective Floyd Feese. “A guy who robs a jewelry store, at least he has the guts to walk in with a gun drawn.

“But these lowlifes are taking everything, including personal mail that could well leave some people devastated--like a letter saying that your grandmother died or something.”

Feese himself has picked up discarded letters from the roadside.

“These guys have been known to just throw the mail out the window as they drive down the freeway, scatter it all over Timbuktu,” he said.

Investigators say the group first began hitting mailboxes in the Oceanside area in early November, then quickly moved eastward to Escondido.

In October, postal inspectors received 10 complaints a month of suspected stolen mail. That number has since skyrocketed, officials say.

“It’s up to 40 or 50 a week, and it’s growing,” Fast said.

The thieves have mainly targeted apartment and condominium complexes where they see nice cars and encounter little or no security.

“They’re targeting the middle class because they figure that’s where the money is,” Fast said.

Many of the victims have been hit repeatedly, detectives said. “They apparently have people out there as spies, because once a cluster of mailboxes gets fixed--bingo--it gets hit again,” Fast said.

Officials estimate that the main gang has from six to 10 thieves, some of which drop out for a while and return, others who might have broken off and begun their own groups.

Recently, mailboxes in Rancho Bernardo have been struck in the same fashion.

“This thing is like an amoeba,” Fast said. “It grows some and then gets a little smaller and then grows again. Then part of it breaks off and starts a whole new creature.”

On Wednesday, authorities recovered more than 3,000 pieces of mail inside a stolen car abandoned in Escondido after a homeowner reported a suspicious vehicle outside his home.

The man called police early Wednesday morning after turning on his outdoor light and seeing a man pop up from inside the car, run to another vehicle and drive off.

The cache of recovered letters, which filled three Postal Service bags, bore addresses from several Rancho Bernardo luxury apartment houses. The car, they said, was stolen from an address in Carlsbad.

Meanwhile, federal authorities are looking for a 34-year-old Canadian woman previously arrested in connection with crimes believed to have been committed by the Route 78 Bandits.

On March 24, San Diego police arrested Suzanne Mitchell and charged her with grand theft auto and forgery after a tip led them to find her in possession of several pieces of stolen mail, as well as a copy of a post office box key.

The woman was released after spending seven days at the Las Colinas Jail in Santee.

“Unfortunately, she was released while we were putting together some federal charges of possession of stolen mail and a stolen post office box key,” Fast said.

“In the meantime, we’ve put out an all-points bulletin for her arrest.”

Authorities are trying to figure out how the group obtained a post office key from which to make copies.

“It’s a good question--one we haven’t been able to answer,” Fast said. “They’ve got one, though. And they’ve used aluminum cans to make others. There could be an insider at the post office, but we’ve pretty much ruled that out.”

Fast asked homeowners who think they might have been victimized by the mail-box thieves to contact authorities.