NOTTINGHAM, Md. — An envelope containing 25 checks for a community crab feast vanished after it was placed in a mailbox inside the Nottingham Post Office on Mercantile Boulevard. The checks were worth about $5,655 altogether; three have since turned up with altered amounts totaling more than $35,000. The organization’s secretary mailed the envelope to Solomons on Sept. 5. It never arrived. The incident has left the group managing suspected check fraud and disrupted payments after its Sept. 27 crab feast. Madge Jones, who chaired the event committee, said she wrote two checks to buy tickets: one for $2,325 and another for $150. At the event, she learned the organization lacked enough money to pay its caterer and seafood vendors. Jones said she used personal checks to help cover bills, including payments to the local fire department. One of her checks bounced, she said. Two days after the event, Jones received a call from PNC Bank’s fraud department. One of her fundraiser checks had been altered to $8,000 and made payable to someone she did not know. She later learned another check had been changed to $4,612.97 to pay a Baltimore Gas and Electric bill; that transaction was refunded. A third check from the envelope, originally written for $75, was changed to $23,041.52 and cleared the account holder’s bank. That customer has been reimbursed. Jones says $8,000 from her account remains tied up as the banks investigate. She has also had to close accounts and address banking arrangements connected to her Social Security payments. The Nottingham Post Office was one of four Baltimore-area facilities examined in a recent audit by the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General. Auditors reported three missing or lost arrow keys at Nottingham and four additional keys that were not properly recorded in the facility’s inventory. Arrow keys provide access to mail receptacles and collection boxes, and the audit warned that weak key controls can increase the risk of mail theft. The audit findings do not establish what happened to the envelope or connect the missing keys to the checks. No one has identified where the envelope disappeared or who may have taken it. The woman who mailed the checks has filed complaints with postal authorities and police. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service said suspected theft inside a postal facility falls under the inspector general’s investigative jurisdiction and that such complaints are referred there. The inspector general has not confirmed whether an investigation into this specific case has been opened.