Two New Jersey men have admitted to running a mail theft operation that drained more than $670,000 from financial institutions after they raided USPS collection boxes across Livingston and Clifton and chemically altered the stolen checks before cashing them. Leslie Blackwood, 25, of Irvington, and Verly Antenor, 24, of Roselle Park, each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal checks from the mail in Newark federal court.
According to NJ.com, the pair and other unnamed accomplices stole mail, including checks, from USPS collection boxes between 2021 and 2022, relying on stolen postal service keys to access the boxes. Blackwood and Antenor then deposited the stolen checks at various banks, a scheme prosecutors say caused financial institutions to lose $670,313.46. Court records show they washed the checks by replacing the original dollar amounts with higher figures before depositing them.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey says the two men used stolen U.S. Postal Service arrow keys — universal master keys capable of opening blue collection boxes across entire ZIP codes — to raid mailboxes in Livingston and Clifton. The federal charge of conspiracy to commit mail theft carries a maximum statutory penalty of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, per the same office. Blackwood is scheduled to be sentenced on February 16, 2027, while Antenor's sentencing is set for December 17, 2026.
Coded Language and a Wider Network
Federal court filings detail how the scheme operated on the ground. On September 30, 2021, Blackwood sent Antenor photos of roughly 49 stolen checks following a theft from Livingston collection boxes, suggesting they select ones they could sell, according to court documents obtained by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Investigators found that members of the conspiracy routinely referred to stolen checks in encrypted messages as “food,” “grub,” or “slips,” and called the act of stealing mail from collection boxes “fishing,” the same court filings show. The criminal information filed against Blackwood also details that the conspiracy extended beyond the two primary defendants to include co-conspirators residing in East Orange and Jersey City, pointing to a broader regional network spanning Essex and Hudson counties.
How Check Washing Works
The technique the men used to alter the stolen checks is a well-documented method known as check washing. It involves using chemical solvents such as acetone or bleach to strip pen ink from payee and dollar amount fields while preserving the account holder's original signature, according to the State of Michigan Attorney General's office. That process allows altered checks to clear initial bank reviews, since the signature itself remains untouched even as the amount and recipient change.
A National Surge in Stolen Mail Keys
The Livingston and Clifton case fits into a much larger pattern of postal key theft playing out across the country. A Financial Crimes Enforcement Network analysis found that U.S. financial institutions filed over 15,000 Suspicious Activity Reports accounting for more than $688 million in mail theft-related check fraud between February and August 2023 alone, per a FinCEN report cited by the U.S. Treasury.
Freedom of Information Act records from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service showed that thieves stole more than 3,437 master arrow keys nationwide in 2024, a 27 percent increase from 2023, with the vast majority still unrecovered, according to 11Alive. A separate U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General report found that federal inspectors received over 800,000 mail theft complaints nationwide between fiscal years 2023 and 2025.
Internal oversight has struggled to keep pace with the problem. A federal audit across 84 U.S. Postal Service facilities found that 76 locations, or 90 percent, suffered from untracked or improperly secured master arrow keys, according to CBS News. In response, the Postal Service launched Project Safe Delivery in May 2023, committing to replace 49,000 physical arrow locks with electronic eLocks designed to render stolen master keys useless, the agency announced.
Part of a Broader Pattern in New Jersey
The Blackwood and Antenor case is one of several similar mail theft prosecutions Hoodline has tracked in the region this year. Just weeks earlier, Hoodline reported on an Atlanta man's guilty plea in a separate $1.2 million Treasury check scheme prosecuted in New Jersey federal court, underscoring how frequently stolen arrow keys and washed checks surface in cases moving through the state's justice system.
