Romeoville, Illinois (CBS) — CBS 2 previously reported on complaints from Chicago residents about mail issues and delays.
Currently, Romeoville businesses say they are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to mail theft and lost deliveries.
Apex Industrial Automation has an extensive record of checks that were supposed to come to the company never arriving. One of the checks totaled more than $71,000.
There were also problems with the checks the company mailed.
“We used to print checks and mail them in,” said Cheryl Sansosti of Apex Industrial.
Auto parts companies were forced to make the switch. In 2022, Sansosti 52 checks worth a total of $105,993.15 disappeared in the mail.
“I started getting calls from vendors saying, 'I haven't paid my bill,'” Sansosti said. “I thought, 'Yes, this is the check number,' and then I found out that out of 52 checks, he never made it to our vendor.”
However, all of the checks were cashed after a U.S. Postal Service employee entered the Romeo Building office and retrieved the mail from the front desk tray.
“This is the safest way to deliver what the U.S. Postal Service expects,” Sansosti said.
After the 52 checks were collected, it is unclear whether they all made it to the Romeoville Post Office. But what is clear is that checks coming from the post office are intercepted long before they reach the apex.
“Those checks are now stolen,” Sansosti said.
Two years after losing $105,000 in withdrawal checks, Apex said it is also losing most of its vendor payments.
“So they're cashing the checks that were sent to us for deposit, and now they're cashing them the same way other checks were being cashed,” Sansosti said. Told.
The company has two years' worth of records. Apex couldn't understand why USPS inspectors couldn't figure it out, and told Sansosti, “You know, we're trying to catch this person.”
Two years later, Sansosti announced that the ringleader of a Post Office check fraud ring had stolen just under $500,000.
If the perpetrators are not caught, this fraudulent scheme could bankrupt both Apex itself and the vendors who owe the stolen money.
Sansosti said if his business is being used as a base to intercept checks, it's probably not alone.
“So how many other businesses are there in the Romeoville area that that post office serves?” she said.
Sansosti said she could not continue to take any more hits.
“I just want a solution,” she said.
