How Common Is Mail and Package Theft in America?

First, separate three very different problems

When people search for package-theft statistics, they may mean different events. One household may find that a parcel was removed from its doorstep. Another may discover that a carrier delivered it to the wrong building. A third person may have paid a fake online seller who never shipped anything.

These problems can all lead to a missing order. They do not belong in one statistical category. The first may be theft after delivery. The second may be misdelivery. The third may be an online-shopping scam. Each has a different evidence trail and reporting path.

Mail theft is broader than porch piracy. It can include theft from mail receptacles and crimes involving letters, checks and packages. By contrast, a doorstep theft estimate tries to count parcels taken after a carrier leaves them at a residential delivery point. That narrower event is not reported in one uniform federal series.

What federal mail-theft enforcement numbers show

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service's Project Safe Delivery dashboard reports 4,257 mail-theft arrests nationwide between May 12, 2023 and September 30, 2026. The agency says it refreshes the dashboard quarterly. This is a count of arrests under a particular initiative, not a count of stolen packages or unique victims.

The difference is essential. An arrest may relate to multiple incidents, while many losses never lead to an arrest. The metric can describe enforcement activity but cannot establish the odds that a residential parcel will be stolen.

In a separate 2024 mail-theft strategy report, USPIS documented 20,574 reports of high-volume mail theft from mail receptacles in fiscal year 2019, rising to 49,146 reports in fiscal year 2023. That's a 139% increase between those two fiscal years.

The report associates the rise partly with financially motivated crime, including check fraud. That means the reported increase should not be interpreted as a measured surge in residential porch piracy.

Another important qualification: USPIS's fiscal year 2024 annual report says mail-theft complaints fell 20% between fiscal years 2023 and 2024. That later decline refers to an agency complaint metric and period; it should not be spliced into the earlier high-volume mail-receptacle report series as if they were automatically identical.

What these records establish is that the Postal Inspection Service monitors and investigates mail theft. They do not provide a universal annual count of packages stolen from private porches across all carriers.

What 56,478 non-delivery complaints mean—and don't mean

The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center annual report lists 56,478 complaints in the non-payment/non-delivery fraud category. A companion IC3 fact sheet reports about $503 million in financial losses for that same category.

This category concerns suspected internet crime. It can include situations in which a consumer paid a seller who never shipped an order, as well as non-payment disputes involving transactions. It is not limited to packages marked delivered by USPS, UPS, FedEx, Amazon or another carrier.

There is another important limitation. IC3 data reflects complaints sent to the FBI, not every incident that happened across the country. Some people never report a scam, and submitted complaints are not all confirmed crimes. The dollar figure represents reported losses rather than an independently audited total.

Why porch-theft estimates vary so much

Private companies sometimes publish estimates for the number of packages stolen each year. These studies can provide clues, but their results depend on who was surveyed and how the questions were framed. A survey asking whether a household experienced a suspected theft in the past year is not the same as a count of all stolen parcels.

Survey reports may also mix household incidents, individual people affected, stolen shipments and total financial loss. Those units should never be treated as interchangeable. A household could lose more than one shipment, while another respondent could report a missing delivery that was later found.

Before quoting a commercial estimate, check the field dates, sample size, recruitment method, question wording and whether respondents distinguished theft from misdelivery. Also ask whether the authors extrapolated a small survey sample to the full U.S. population, and whether uncertainty is disclosed.

ReportPlot does not display a speculative national package-theft total as a fact. If a suitable independent, reproducible survey becomes available, we can include it with transparent methodology and appropriate caveats.

Can these statistics rank delivery companies or states?

Not fairly. A raw number of reports does not reveal a theft rate unless we know how many deliveries were made in the same location, time period and service category. A large carrier could receive more complaints simply because it makes more deliveries.

Geography can be equally misleading. Cities differ in housing types, apartment-lobby use, population, reporting habits, delivery volume, access to mailrooms and local law-enforcement practices. Even when an agency reports state-level complaints, those numbers do not automatically translate into comparable local doorstep-theft risk.

The same rule applies to ReportPlot. Our community submissions are voluntary, not randomly sampled. We can describe what eligible users reported, but we cannot infer that one carrier is more dangerous than another or that a neighborhood is a theft hotspot without stronger evidence and denominators.

That is why ReportPlot's public aggregates require consent, moderation, exclusion of flagged duplicates, and a minimum of ten distinct accounts in each displayed segment. Small groups are suppressed to protect privacy; no public report should identify a private address or specific delivery worker.

What to do when your package is missing

Statistics describe broader patterns, but they cannot tell you what happened to one shipment. Start with your own delivery record. Check the timestamp, location notes and any proof-of-delivery photo. Look at agreed delivery locations, building desks, package lockers and household members before deciding that theft occurred.

If the photo shows another entrance, compare visible features without confronting or accusing a neighbor. Save the tracking status and any messages. Our wrong-house photo guide explains how to request a location review.

Next, contact the seller or the carrier through the applicable support route. Ask for a case reference and keep a record of the reply. If an online seller never shipped an item or refuses to resolve a qualifying non-delivery issue, check the applicable payment-dispute process promptly.

For suspected theft involving U.S. mail, USPIS provides official reporting and prevention information. Other suspected thefts may be appropriate for local law enforcement. A private ReportPlot case can help you collect dates, records and outcomes, but it is not a substitute for reporting to the relevant agency or merchant.

Questions people ask about package-theft data

Source desk and editorial method

This article uses agency definitions and separates arrest counts, mail-theft reports, online crime complaints and reported losses. It does not combine distinct measures or present them as a national porch-theft estimate. All figures were checked on November 9, 2026; agency dashboards may change.

1. USPIS, Project Safe Delivery dashboard — 4,257 mail-theft arrests through September 30, 2026.
2. USPIS, Mail Theft Strategy (2024) — FY2019 and FY2023 high-volume mail-receptacle theft reports.
3. USPIS, FY2024 annual report — 2023–2024 change in mail-theft complaints.
4. FBI IC3, 2025 annual report — non-payment/non-delivery complaint count.
5. FBI IC3, 2025 complaint fact sheet — category loss value.
6. USPIS, Mail & Package Theft — reporting and prevention advice.

For clarification, corrections or source questions, see ReportPlot's editorial standards and contact page.