FAIRBORN — As many people are taking advantage of summer sales, thieves are also looking to take advantage.
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As reported on News Center 7, porch pirates are looking to snag the online deliveries people are buying, but there are ways to protect your packages and ensure you get what you paid for.
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With summer sales at stores like Walmart, Target, and Amazon, ordering something is just too hard to pass up.
Lauren Yacobucci, who lives in Fariborn, told News Center 7’s Xavier Hershvoitz that she planned to take advantage of the Amazon Prime Day sales.
And other people across the Miami Valley are also keeping an eye on the sales going on.
“They’ve got lots of good deals they’ve been promoting,” Brittany Evers, of Kettering, said.
As many people cash in on the deals going on, the bad guys are looking to take advantage.
“One in four Americans, according to our research, has been a victim of package theft, and there’s just no sign of this slowing down or going away,” Corie Colliton, a Senior Industry Analyst with Security.org, said. “All types of homes, apartments, freestanding homes, condos, townhouses, rural areas, urban areas. It doesn’t matter. It’s happening everywhere in every state.”
Porch Pirates have made their mark here in the Miami Valley as well.
In May, deputies with the Greene County Sheriff’s Office were looking for a man they say stole someone’s package.
Last year, West Alexandria Police were looking for a woman who they believed stole some packages as well.
Police in Springboro even shared video of a man grabbing a package right off someone’s porch.
Colliton said that while cameras can help keep packages safe, it doesn’t always prevent theft.
“So what a camera can do it doesn’t always prevent theft, but what it does is give you a way to know exactly when a package might have been left at your porch,” Colliton said.
One of the best ways to protect your packages is to change where you send them.
This could be at a loved one’s place that will be home, or an Amazon Locker.
“It’s a secure location where your package is being delivered, and you are given a code upon delivery that no one else receives, so no one else knows how to open up this locker,” Colliton said.
You can also delay delivery to a day and time when you will be home, that way you can grab your package as soon as it arrives.
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