Yuba City Police arrest suspects in mail theft, recover nearly 200 stolen letters
(FOX40.COM) — The Yuba City Police Department was patrolling the neighborhoods around Regnacy Park on Wednesday morning in North Yuba City. •Video above: Town Hall meeting on mail thefts in Natomas
According to YCPD, while the officer was patrolling the area, he saw three subjects standing near a community mailbox. The officer decided to go and investigate what was happening.
The officer realized that none of the three subjects lived in the area and had been traveling from the Fresno area, says YCPD.
YCPD says that one of the subjects was on Post-Relase Community Supervision and all of them were associated with a vehicle that was close by. The officer per PRCS searched the vehicle and found almost 200 pieces of stolen mail which all belonged to the residents of the Regency Park area.
One adult and child test postive for Measles in Tuolumne County
At this time, the three suspects have been arrested and booked into the Sutter County Jail under suspicion of:
Attempted Identity Theft
Mail Theft
As of 9:30 p.m., the investigation remains active, and additional charges are pending.
YCPD said, 'This was a great proactive investigation by Officer Morris which prevented further victimization of Yuba City residents. One of the most common motivations to commit mail theft is to use the stolen information to commit Identity Theft.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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How benefits fraud exploded – and milking the system went mainstream
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On Monday, the Prime Minister revealed the results of Lord Robertson's Strategic Defence Review, which included a pledge to build up to 12 new attack submarines and increase defence spending from 2.3 per cent to 2.5 per cent of national income. He had barely finished the announcement when it was reported that Nato would oblige him to commit to increasing defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035. On Thursday US defence secretary Pete Hegseth pushed for five per cent. Meanwhile, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicted that the UK economic growth would slump to a measly one per cent next year, hit by uncertainty over Donald Trump's tariffs regime and higher-than-expected inflation. Even if Starmer manages to reform the welfare system, as he has promised – and his handbrake U-turn on winter fuel payments suggest this will be easier said than done – it appears inevitable he will have to put up taxes, too. 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In its report last year, the DWP reported a top-line figure that 2.8 per cent of its £268 billion total benefits outlay (which includes around £160 billion on pensions, less susceptible to fraud), or £7.4 billion, was lost to fraud. This year fraud was down to 2.2 per cent, or £6.5 billion – a sum that has more than doubled since 2020 – with a further £1.9 billion on claimant error and £1 billion official error. If fraud was its own block of spending, it would be not far from how much the government spends on the entire legal system (£8.6 billion), and more than higher education (£7.2 billion), foreign aid (£7.2 billion) and potholes (£7 billion). It would be enough to buy you a Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier with change for 11 F-35s to put on it. A 1p cut in income tax would cost just £6.4 billion. There were 7.5 million people on Universal Credit in January 2025, up from 6.4 million people on Universal Credit in January 2024. 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Pomfrey had received more than £1 million in benefits over a 15-year period, having lied that her MS had left her blind and in need of a wheelchair, before she was arrested. In 2020 she was sentenced to three years and eight months, after what the judge called 'staggering' dishonesty and 'determined benefit fraud on a substantial scale'. In October 2023, Hossein Ali Najafi, 57, who was born in Iran, was sentenced to 29 months in prison for falsely claiming £349,000 in benefits, using two identities and 26 bank accounts. 'Fraudsters like Hossein Ali Najafi abuse the benefits system, which exists to support people who are in genuine need,' said Maqsood Khan, senior crown prosecutor of Mersey Cheshire Fraud Unit. And so on and on. Benefit fraud has rocketed in recent times. A State of the Nation report commissioned by David Cameron's government in 2010 estimated the total fraud to be £1 billion. In 2011/12, the DWP estimated that fraud was worth 0.7 per cent of the total budget. 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That's not counting the men and women – perhaps following tips gleaned from a 'sickfluencer' – who are gaming the system but technically within the letter of it. It has been argued that one factor in the shocking rise in Universal Credit fraud has been the move away from in-person assessments to remote ones, often conducted over the phone. Last year Peter Schofield, the DWP permanent secretary, blamed the 'underlying growth of fraud in the economy' for the increase. Reporting on the 2024 figures, the National Audit Office's Gareth Davies said it was clear the DWP 'no longer expects Universal Credit fraud and error to return to the levels seen before the significant increase during the Covid-19 pandemic'. A DWP spokesperson told The Telegraph: 'We are bringing forward the biggest fraud crackdown in a generation, as part of wider plans that will save £9.6 billion by 2030. 'Thanks to our efforts we have reduced fraud by around £800 million – with over £400 million of savings in Universal Credit alone in the last year. We are absolutely clear we will not tolerate any waste as we protect taxpayer's money.' Joe Shalam, the policy director of the Centre for Social Justice, a think tank, who previously worked at the DWP, believes that there has been a cultural shift in recent years towards seeking out benefits. 'The rise in benefit fraud is analogous to the rise in shoplifting,' he says. 'A population-level change driven by wider economic forces, like inflation and the cost of living. Such casual lawbreaking was highlighted last week when Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary and putative successor to Kemi Badenoch as Conservative leader, released a widely-shared film in which he confronted some of the passengers on the Tube, thought to be as many as one in 25 of the total, who push through the barriers without paying. But there is a cultural dimension to it as well. The welfare system has an implicit or assumed sense that everyone who is 'entitled' will not necessarily apply for it. We're seeing a cultural shift where people are much more likely to say 'my neighbour is receiving X, why am I not?' says Shalam. 'There are some cultural and economic factors that make it harder to get back to a pre-pandemic norm.' In March, for example, it was reported that the Motability scheme, which provides taxpayer-funded cars to those claiming PIP benefits, had signed up 815,000 people last year, an increase of more than 170,000 in a year. Claimants can apply for a new model every three years. The Motability fleet is the biggest in Europe, valued at more than £14 billion. On social media, there are accounts dedicated to showing their followers how they can secure a car for themselves, too. All of which can corrode faith in government, says James Frayne, a veteran political strategist. 'Since the late 2000s, when everyone had to tighten their belts, there has been increasing exasperation that some people are wrongly living off the fat of the land by claiming benefits they aren't due,' he says. 'While people get angry at cases of systematic criminal fraud, they can get just as angry at individuals they think just can't be bothered to work. It all adds up to this sense that nobody seems to be able to govern Britain properly. Inevitably, the anger at those milking or ripping off the system rebounds towards politicians.' Soon after winning the general election last year, Keir Starmer announced that cracking down on benefit fraud would be a priority for his government. In his speech to the Labour Party conference in September, he said that new legislation, following a policy mooted by the Conservatives, would let investigators 'root out' fraud with similar powers of 'search and seizure' to those enjoyed by HMRC. This would compel banks to hand over financial information about their customers where there was reasonable suspicion of benefit fraud. The plan was designed to save the taxpayer £1.6 billion over five years and free up more money for public services. Another proposal, announced in January, was to strip benefit fraudsters of their driving licences. Starmer's reforms have met with resistance. Neil Duncan-Jordan, who was elected the Labour MP for Poole last year, has proposed amendments to the bill that would ensure only those suspected of fraud would be surveilled. Writing in The Guardian, Duncan accused Starmer of 'resurrecting Tory proposals for mass spying on people who receive state support' and that under the proposed legislation 'welfare recipients would be treated as suspects, simply because they need support from the state'. The vast sums of money lost to benefit fraud are also an incentive for a government to crack down on it, to free up money for other projects. Recent comparative international studies are thin on the ground, but Britain might learn from Finland, a high-trust society with a relatively simple benefits system and high rates of digitisation, where fraud rates amount to less than half a percentage point of the total paid. According to the latest report by Kela, the Finnish welfare institution, there were 1,104 suspected cases of benefit 'misuse' in 2024, amounting to €7.2 million (£6 million); the number of cases has been stable over the past five years. In the UK, failing a cultural reversion away from seeking out every benefit you might be entitled to, Shalam believes technology might improve efficiency. 'Analysing and assessing all the information about people's claims and their condition takes a huge volume of human resource,' he says. 'There's a lot of potential in AI to crack down on fraud and make sure the system is going to those who need it most.' Ultimately the people most angry about benefit fraud are those working on the front lines, says Amber Rudd, who was secretary of state for work and pensions from 2018-2019. 'The people who mind most about [fraud] are the people who work in the job centres,' she says. 'They find it really upsetting and frustrating. They are trying to help other people. When I went round the job centres it was the first thing they wanted to talk about. Fraud takes many different forms. The abusive form, forcing single mothers to go in and apply, then there are the multiple frauds where someone has a system. 'It's like the bank robber who says he robs banks because 'that's where the money is'. There's money being handed out; there is inevitably going to be fraud. I thought at the time we could do better with technology trying to weed it out. But it's going to be a constant battle.' In attempting to mitigate Sara Morris's sentence, her lawyer Paul Cliff conceded that her application to the DWP 'did not give the full picture,' but that 'running was one of the ways she tried to manage her MS'. 'She lost her home because of financial problems,' he also said. 'And was struggling to keep her head above water financially.' As he tries to placate an increasingly angry electorate while balancing Britain's precarious books, Keir Starmer may sympathise with her. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
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