“had for years maintained a post office box under an assumed name”
According to a relative of mine who works at the post office, since 9/11 there are regulations against that sort of thing. You have to satisfy the postmaster that you who rent the box are a real person who lives in the area; and that everyone whom you list as an addressee for that box really lives in the area. They actually look very closely at box rental documentation, and ask for photo ID even from customers they are familiar with. This includes customers renewing box rentals after the regulations came into being.
And I’m talking about a post office in a rather small town.
(Or do I live in a paranoid part of PA?)
The rules have been tightened since 911.
I wrote the previous rules such that released felons and professionl prostitutes (who have a very high relocation rate) could rent PO Boxes.
The rationale was that this would reduce postal forwarding costs by tens of millions of dollars every year, and might well help to regularize life for released felons and professional prostitutes.
That's all gone now. The criminals and whores find it much harder to get their mail delivered.
Puts 'em on the internet eh!
Time marches on.