Posted 10/17/09 at 11:40:06 PM by Justin Kerr

What do pacifistic mailmen do when they “go postal”? Well, if we limit our sample group to a single mail handler from Philadelphia, then you turn to a life of crime by stealing the easily identifiable video games shipped by online rental service GameFly. The disks come in an easy to spot bright orange package, and Reginald Johnson stole every envelope that he could get his hands on, a tally which would add up to more than 2,200 disks over a six month period. After jacking the disks, he would turn around and sell them to a local Gamestop for a tidy profit.

After being confronted by Police, Johnson led local authorities on a high-speed chase which ended with him crashing his SUV, and being tracked down on foot. When he was finally apprehended, police found 81 stolen games in a duffel bag he was carrying with him. For his crimes, Johnson is likely to receive 12 to 18 months of jail time, and will likely be in search of a new career upon release.

2,200 video games would fetch a tidy sum, but he is still pretty far from beating the record for disks stolen. That honor falls to Myles Weathers, a mail handler from Springfield Massachusetts who managed to swipe over 3,000 DVDs before he was caught.

Did these guys actually think they could get away with this?

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Posted 07/13/09 at 06:45:05 PM by Paul Lilly

You probably pay your cell phone, cable TV, Internet, and several other bills online, and even so, you probably also receive a stack of mail in your mailbox every day. Enter the Swiss postal service which, starting in June, will offer subscribers a digital delivery option.

The service, called Swiss Post Box, will send subscribers scanned images of their unopened envelopes to their email address. Subscribers can then decide which ones they want opened and have the contents scanned so that it can be read online. In addition, the Swiss Post Box will offer to archive contents, send unopened letters to another address, or shred and recycle unwanted mail, The New York Times reports.

"There are very few things you get that you actually have to have in your hand," said Michael Laprade, a two year subscriber to Earth Class Mail, a Seattle-based company licensing its technology to the Swiss postal service.

The new service will start at about $18.35 per month. In the U.S., Earth Class Mail subscribers pay anywhere from $10 to $60 per month depending on how much mail is scanned.

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