They're using honey to get your money - but you can easily outsmart them.

I took a crash course in what is known as sticky mailbox theft last Saturday when I innocently tried to mail a utility bill just a block from my house. In doing so, I accidentally stumbled on the latest technique used by criminals.

Here's how it happened. I walked up to a standalone mailbox at 224 Claremont Avenue in Hometown. The typical blue mailbox at Village Square Mall is the only one available in my neighborhood.

I opened the small door at the top of the box to drop my letter. As I did, I began to close the hatch and noticed that my letter wasn't sliding toward the chute leading to the bottom of the bin.

I reached in and discovered a sticky adhesive, possibly honey or molasses, coating the inside of the hatch. I reached inside and retrieved my letter, finding that the entire back side of the envelope was coated in sticky goo. In fact, it was so sticky that I couldn't possibly drop it down into the bin or else it'd stick to whatever other mail happened to be there.

"A sticky mailbox scam," I thought, and I was right.

What I learned is that the sticky substance acts like flypaper; catching letters that people otherwise think simply dropped down the chute. But that doesn't happen, and crooks can stop by later and grab your mail.

And why not do so, they figure. It's graduation time and lots of folks are mailing cash to graduates. Same for June weddings. Cash put inside a greeting card is an instant bonus for crooks and druggies.

And if you mail a check instead of cash, you might be in even more trouble because a check carries your address, plus in some cases your phone number, and definitely your checking account number. A perfect recipe for someone to steal your information and your identity.

It's also possible for crooks to "wash" a check of its information and even change dollar amounts.

I reported the sticky mailbox to the U. S. Post Office on Monday and the clerk knew exactly what I was talking about.

"They've been doing it at mailboxes around Tamaqua but this is the first I've heard about Hometown," she said, as she summoned another postal employee to sound the alarm.

The sticky mailbox caper is new to northeastern Pennsylvania but not so new to New York and New Jersey, where it's been around since at least 2012.

It also was reported in Dallas/Fort Worth at that time and in Mount Vernon, New York, in 2014, according to online news reports.

Here are a few preventive steps you can do:

Don’t send cash in the mail. Mail your letters and bills only at the post office or hand them directly to your mail carrier. Try to use mailboxes that have slots, not doors. The slots would probably help to limit unauthorized access to contents of the mailbox. If all else fails and you must drop your mail into a mailbox, double-check to make sure it's not getting stuck on the way down. If so, report it immediately to the post office.

Be careful when mailing your letters; don't be a victim of a thief's greed, laziness and dishonesty. A little bit of honey is a good thing, but not when it's coating the inside of a mailbox door. 

Caption: The inside door of this Hometown mailbox was coated with a sticky substance last week, an apparent attempt at mail theft.