2 East Valley banks evacuated in powder scare

Two East Valley bank branches and four in Phoenix received letters containing a mysterious white powder Wednesday, police say.

The Chase Bank at Lindsay and Warner roads in Gilbert and the Mesa branch at Greenfield Road and Main Street received the letters.

Slideshow: View photos from the scene at Chase Bank

All six of the locations were evacuated. All of the mailings targeted Chase Bank branches, officials said.

Gilbert police received the emergency call at 12:15 p.m., according to Sgt. Mark Marino, a police spokesman.

The bank was evacuated and cleared by 2 p.m. by a Gilbert fire team with a hazardous materials unit standing by, said Gilbert Fire Department spokesman Herb Ham. No injuries were reported and the envelope was given to the Arizona Department of Public Safety for further inspection, Ham said.

Mesa Police Department spokesman Sgt. Ed Wessing said they responded to an emergency call just minutes after the Gilbert report. The bank was evacuated and the area was cleared in the afternoon by the Mesa Fire Department.

In Mesa, bank employees were calm as they gathered outside the branch at about 1:30 p.m., waiting for city fire officials to finish the investigation and allow them to return to work. In Gilbert, bank employees had returned to work shortly before 2 p.m.

Capt. Shelly Jamison of the Phoenix Fire Department said the Chase Bank employees who handled the powder have not complained of any medical symptoms, adding the targeting of the banks may be a part of a nationwide white powder scare.

The other Valley banks, located at the intersection of 16th Street and Buckeye Road, 6030 N. 19th Ave., 5041 N. 16th St. and 2950 W. Peoria Ave., also were evacuated, Jamison said.

Field testing by hazardous materials crews in Phoenix had determined the unidentified substance did not pose a serious threat, but as a precaution bank employees were asked to clean with soap and water, Jamison said.

Chase banks and other financial institutions have been sent more than 30 threatening letters as part of a nationwide scare this week, according to media reports. The letters were mailed from Amarillo, Texas, to banks in Colorado, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Illinois and the District of Columbia, according to the Denver Post.

The Post also quoted an FBI spokesman in Dallas, Mark White, as saying the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in Dallas and the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision in Irving, Texas, also received threatening letters with a white powdery substance on Tuesday.

Mary Jane Rogers, spokeswoman with J.P. Morgan Chase, said the bank's branches began receiving letters that contained a suspicious white powder on Monday, with banks in Colorado and Oklahoma and a credit card facility in Illinois being the first. Employees were given instructions on handling suspicious letters on Tuesday, Rogers said.

"The letters are of a threatening nature," she said, adding she is unsure if all of the letters received at Chase branches have been identical. All of the letters, including those received Wednesday in the Valley, carry the same postmark from Amarillo.

The FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and local authorities are investigating the matter, said FBI Special Agent Manuel Johnson, a spokesman with the agency's Phoenix bureau.

Test results on the powdery substances in the Arizona letters were not immediately available and investigators had yet to establish a firm connection to the similar letters around the country, he said.

"It's a fluid situation, because it was just reported within the last few hours," Johnson said Wednesday.

He asked anyone with information regarding the letters to contact local investigators at (602) 279-5511 or www.fbi.gov.

Johnson added: "I also want to remind the public that sending a hoax letter is a serious crime."

Pat Armstrong, a U.S. Postal Inspection Service spokeswoman in Phoenix, said the other targeted banks typically discovered the powder to be "nonhazardous."

The letters are being collected and will be sent to a laboratory affiliated with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Armstrong said.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is offering a $100,000 reward for anyone who can link police to any suspects.

Meanwhile, the New York Police Department was investigating another letter containing suspicious white powder that was sent to The New York Times. The newspaper's offices in midtown Manhattan remained open Wednesday.

A law enforcement official said the letter sent to the Times does not appear to be related to those sent to the financial institutions. The Times letter was not postmarked from Texas and contains a different substance than that in the bank letters, the official said

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Reporter Paul Giblin also contributed to this report.

Check back for more details as they become available.