Notable Case: Caught By a Decoy Letter
A man named Evans, who was well regarded at the post office, was exposed by detectives for operating a scheme with a mail carrier where they would extract money from mail being sent from the post office and burn the envelopes, ensuring that the mail and money would never be seen again. This scheme would be caught by detectives when the postmaster requested assistance in finding where the missing mail was going and so the detectives planted decoy letters that they would track to find out where they were stopped. In their efforts they linked the mail carrier who was stealing the envelopes with Evans who were both charged with stealing money.
In terms of the narrative of theft reporting this case fits quite well as it is a case of men stealing from people they doesn't know which is the most common form of theft. if anything the sheer amount of thefts done under this scheme make it quite unusual as the estimation of money stolen was alleged to be five hundred dollars in case where presumably less than five to ten dollars were stolen at a time from these individual letters.