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Thief steals $8,000, washes check from Tulsa woman

By: Pete Knutson

Posted at 9:00 AM, Oct 09, 2022

and last updated 2022-10-10 08:03:17-04

TULSA, Okla. — The victims of crime have all kinds of stories to tell. Some are more tragic than others.

So she’ll always remember, a friend of many years gave Becky Kruse a set of chimes, with a charm, engraved with words of hope… after her husband passed away, just days ago.

“I come in at night and I say goodnight, Tom,” Becky says, as she gently rings the chimes, which hang over the dining room table.

She surely remembers the good times, when Becky and Tom’s family was growing up. And their visits to her husband’s childhood home, on the fertile farmlands of Ohio.

“The kids complained because they never got a vacation, their vacation was going to Ohio.”

In a photo on her living room wall, a winter blanket of snow covers Tom’s homestead, but it was the summer visits….

“We’d help wash pigs to get ready for the fair.”

…. that Becky and Tom, treasured most.

“My son actually wrote an essay in kindergarten or first grade about how I spent my family vacation, and I helped my cousin wash a pig for the fair, and the teacher said that’s the best essay I’ve ever read.”

Now, though, those memories are all she has, of her husband of 46 years. They first met in fifth grade and got married when they were 20.

Decade after decade, time that developed a bond that can’t be easily broken… not even by death. Those chimes, Becky believes, are a testament, to that.

“One night I thought I heard them, I was being haunted, but it was the neighbor’s, it was windy and it was the neighbor’s wind chimes.”

Truly, a time of struggling with sorrow, only for Becky, to be grieved even more, by a heartless thief. A criminal had stolen a check she had mailed, and altered it, stealing $8,000 from her account.

“And my heart just went wild, I said well, I hope the check to the funeral home doesn’t bounce, which it sure enough did.”

A ruthless act, Becky says, which at a time of heartbreak, was just too much to handle.

“I was livid, I was sad, I was angry, I was crying, I had heart palpitations. I thought I was going to have a heart attack in this living room like my husband did three weeks ago.”

Becky says she dropped the stolen check off at a blue collection box outside the post office near 51^st and Sheridan.

She had written it for a hundred dollars, for a breast cancer awareness fundraiser. But after it was stolen from that box, a thief, washed it, essentially erasing the ink, and writing themselves a check… for $8,100.

“It’s just awful, I hate someone would do this, I don’t understand it.”

Becky filed a fraud report with the banks involved, the police, and the postal inspector.

She hopes she’ll get her thousands of dollars back. But while she waits, she wants to tell her story…. Shout it from the rooftops, to be careful when mailing checks.

“You know, I’m OK, and my health is fine, and thank goodness for that, but I don’t want this to happen to somebody else.”

Not her elderly neighbors, not her family, not her friends. Speaking up, Becky says, is what her husband, would want her to do.

“If I get flustered, worried, I just say Tom, help me through this, and he does, he really does, it’s crazy.”

Her heart harkens back to the sound of those chimes, and the words engraved on that charm.

You left me beautiful memories, your love is still my guide, and though I cannot see you, you’re always, by my side.

As we’ve recently reported, check washing is an old-school scheme, made new again.

Authorities say they believe it’s because COVID-19 stimulus checks have dried up, and criminals find it easy to steal checks from mailboxes, not only at the post office but at your curb.

To protect yourself from check washing, postal inspectors say to deposit your mail just before the last pickup of the day.

Don’t leave your mail in your box any longer than necessary, certainly not overnight.

If you’ll be gone, have neighbors pick up your mail, or have it stopped at the post office.

And you may want to consider taking advantage of electronic banking and using fewer checks, if possible.

As for securing mail at the post office, some suggest putting ATM-type depositories in the outside walls of post office buildings so any envelopes mailed go directly into the building, making them harder to steal

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