How would you have handled this mess?

Honestly, I would tell my son that those belonged to other people and they were their personal cards and they’re really not our business and we should leave them ripped up as they wanted them to be.

My curiousiity would get the better of me and I would have helped reassemble them to get more info.
Maybe they were stolen from other people’s mailboxes.
Maybe they were all to one person who passed away.
Maybe someone was cleaning up, decided to throw them all away, and they fell off the recycling truck.

Unless I was sure it was the first case (stolen from mailboxes) I would not say anything and would heat my house with the pieces. .

To “prove” if it was the first case (stolen) I’d look for the postmark date and the addresses. If the dates are all similar but the addresses are to and from different people I’d figure they were stolen from mailboxes.

I’m thinking like @LuckyGuy. People send money in birthday cards. I’m imagining hand held metal detectors being used by postal employees to scan for currency to steal peoples money their grannies send them.
My ex MIL heard about how currency could be detected and stolen, so her brilliant solution was to wrap the money in tin foil. LOL

Things scattered on the ground don’t belong to anyone. I’m silly like that, I would have picked it all up with my kid, if for no other reason than to pick up trash.

I’d collect them and put them in the bin.
Because I’m a really nice person.

I also would probably clean up the mess if I had time but not spend more time on it than that. I would wonder though.

My first inclination is to suspect “Postal employee theft”, and on that basis, that is, using that as a working hypothesis, I would investigate further, as @LuckyGuy and others have suggested.

If the addresses all seemed to be “local”, say to one town or likely postal route, and especially if the postmarks on the envelopes were recent, then I would take this as a concern to the US Postal Service inspector for the area and let them deal with it. The concern would be that a corrupt postal employee, recognizing birthday cards for what they are, could be taking those to strip them for any cash they might contain (especially cards to children), and then carelessly disposing of the evidence. That’s not only corrupt, but pretty damn stupid as well, and that person should not be delivering mail.

On the other hand, if my cursory investigation indicated or seemed to indicate that this was someone’s personal cache of unwanted old mail, then I’d just toss it. (But that would have been tossed in regular or recycled trash anyway, so… I’m still curious.)

@CWOTUS in my experience in dealing with the US postal service, even if you brought them the evidence as described, they’d do nothing about it. At this point, all you have is “evidence”, but it does not point to a crime. It would take too many man hours to sort out the details.

If you could reconstruct just one recipient’s address you could ask them if they received the card.
Their answer might suggest what you need to do next.

How could they have gotten the card if the envelope were torn open and the card torn up?

They could have opened the envelopes, taken out the cards and money then ripped up the now empty cards and envelopes.
We need to have Sherlock Holmes sniff the envelopes so he could identify the perpetrator/s.

@LuckyGuy yes, that’s how the perps would have gotten the money but you were saying check with the addressee and see if they got the card which they couldn’t have. Definitely a case for Sherlock Holmes!

The finder can write a litter to the intended recipient asking if they received a card from Aunt Edna. (Listed on the return address).

I love a good mystery, and this is one since they are addressed to different people in different locations. Yes, I’d help your daughter since she asked. It may cultivate a budding interest that could lead to a career path.

At minimum, it would teach your daughter that her requests for help are taken seriously. It would also provide an opportunity to work on a project together. There are so many potential life lessons that can be learned from this one happenstance.

And, on ^^^ that note, I will tell you what I did.
My daughter, with her boyfriend, had picked up all the pieces they could find, including waiting for traffic to thin so they could get a piece flapping around in the street.
I knew nothing of this at the time. They inspected the pieces, tried puzzling some together. They learned that there was a variety of origins, and a variety of intended recipients.
They decided my small fry would bring the pieces to me and ask what to do.
I told her it seemed like mail theft. I wouldn’t touch them. I gave her a clean, empty bag and had her put the stack inside.
This all took place Sunday evening.
Monday, I waited for my postal carrier. He parks right next to my house, so it was easy to flag him down. I related the story to him. He was patient, and polite. I have a real nice guy here, and I felt confident he could advise me what to do, if anything.
When I got to the point that there were various different senders and destinations involved, his eyebrows went up. Je agreed that it sounded suspicious. When I asked what to do, he said he could take everything to his supervisor, and that they would effort to contact the various people, and that if a crime was at hand, they would send the matter higher. He then added, “If you don’t suspect I did anything.” I told him I know he isn’t stupid. Only a stupid person would rob the mail and dump the evidence right on the ground on his own route.
In regards to my daughter, I could have cried. Given all her teen issues going on, and disrespect towards me lately, it really warmed my heart how she handled this. They both assumed her bfs mother would not have dealt with the matter, and she trusted me to take action. She told me everything. She is saddened by the thought that some people would have birthdays and be hurt they didn’t hear from a certain loved one. She was relieved that I took the matter seriously and took action.
I told her I was proud of her, and that I thought she did the right thing, except…
I thought she should have hadled the pieces as little as possible. I assured her that I was not verbally spanking her, that I simply wanted to make a point for the off chance she shoyld have a future occasion to consider.
We both feel good about the whole thing as far as trusting each other and working it out together.
I have renewed confidence in my daughter.
@Pied_Pfeffer, yes, it has been a learning experience for us both, and I am glad for it.
@LuckyGuy, I like your style. Come by and hang out sometime. Maybe you can set up some geocaches in my town.
So, some good thoughts here. @cazzie, I didn’t know about the detectors. How do metal detectors pick up paper money?

I think I may call the office for my zip, if I don’t hear from them in the next couple of days (for a statement) and ask if they learned anything important from the pieces. If they say, “What pieces?”, I will know I misjudged my nice guy.

Yeah, @Patty_Melt keep us posted.

I just got my mail today. My carrier left the drawstring bag I had put the pieces in, and a handwritten note telling me his supervisers are working on the situation.
I just know my daughter will want to keep that. She is disappointed that she doesn’t get to help rejoin the pieces and track the destinations. I am actually hoping they will want her to file a report.
What excellent real life experience this is for her.

Thanks for following up and letting us know. “Enquiring minds” and all that.

I’ll bet there’s already a geocache right around the corner.

The ink on the bills is somewhat metallic. I think there is even a metal thread in some denominations, isn’t there?

Check out Wiegand wire. Transmitters and receivers.

Today the mailman knocked on my door. An investigation has been opened. They want more information from my daughter.

Hooray!

Tell them they’ll have to come back with a warrant, and go through her attorney. And be sure to have a reporter on speed dial.

j/k – I’m glad to see that this is happening and that they are asking for more information. On the other hand… this IS the federal government, so do be at least minimally cautious.

Lol.
I think all they need is a brief written statement about when and where the pieces were found.
If there were any checks involved, this may help them to notify the senders in time to have payment cancelled.

That is such good news!!!

Well, I don’t know that I would have given it that much thought. I only thought like many above, just pick up the pieces and toss them. This was a good learning experience for me. I’m anxious to know the outcome too.

@Patty_Melt Geocaches are already set up in your town! @LuckyGuy turned me on to that, and we have a bunch here. They even have them in the tiniest towns around here that you can imagine. He told me the other day there is supposed to be a meeting of geocaching minds on Saturday morning at the dam here. I’m going to try and make it. I’m super lazy on Saturdays, though.

I stated on another thread, my daughter tried geocaching here.
Every single listing she could find was old, and nothing was there. My area appeared cache rich, until one notices how long since any were visited.
I just thought my town could benefit from the expertise of @LuckyGuy.

I’ve hidden 2 and both are still around after ~15 years! They get found a few times per year. Both caches are camo green, 50 cal. ammo cans and are considered “large”.
To find them you have to walk a little in the woods and spend some time communing with nature. I guess that filters out the riff-raff who just grab stuff or steal it. A couple of times I’ve put a stack of wheresgeorge.com bills in them with a note to take just one. Sure enough people take only one. It’s a beautiful thing.

Oh, that is KOOL!

I got an update from Mr. Postman. He said they tracked the barcodes, and it showed up from the same sorting machine, so it was a postal employee. He said from the codes they can narrow it down to just a couple of possible people, so I guess the investigation must be currently involved with watching certain employees.
Wow. It blows my mind my daughter put all that in motion taking a walk with her boyfriend.

But how would that prove that a postal employee did it?

@Dutchess_III Because the postal employee would be the one with the access to the sorting machine.

… and the collection of disparately addressed envelopes. Not to mention “to be that stupid.

@Patty_Melt Wow! Thanks for the update! I’ll bet they have camera data that can be reviewed to narrow it down even further.
I find it incredible that someone would do something that stupid for a few $.

But…birthday cards? To different people?

Grandma money.

People just blow my mind. If it was a postal worker…they make pretty good money. What’s $20 here and there?
When I worked at Boeing Computer Services I worked in the department that printed paychecks. One day, this new guy, who was stupid, lazy, and never took a bath, were alone in the department over lunch. Unknown to me, he stole, like, 4 paychecks after they printed. They figured it out really fast. I don’t know how. The first I heard of it was when I was called in front of my big supervisor. Since he and I were the only ones there it had to be one of us. He quickly believed it wasn’t me.
I mean, the dude worked at BOEING. Of course, he stupidly tried to cash them and went to jail. Don’t know what happened to him after that. So he lost how many hundreds of thousands of dollars he would have gotten from a life time of working at Boeing for a few hundred in paychecks.