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‘Tis the season, they say, when it is better to give than receive. But in Texas, and perhaps especially in North Texas, many are revising the old cliche to read “better than take than for anyone else to receive.” This time of year, porch pirates are every bit as prevalent as nativity scenes and inflatable reindeer on front lawns.
According to Safewise, a home security website, present predators flourish in the Lone Star State, and many of them do their hunting in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. Safewise lists Texas as the No. 3 worst state for front door package theft, with more than $1 billion in lost goods. But that’s not all that surprising, given the state’s hefty population. Texas trails only California and New York in that regard, so such a ranking tracks, really.
It’s this specific area’s lofty ranking that should prompt local Amazon customers to exercise more caution than usual. Dallas-Fort Worth now ranks as the sixth-worst “city” for package theft in the nation, up from No. 8 last year.
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According to the report’s statistics, a whopping $159,096,197 worth of stolen packages over the course of 3,627,708 incidents. It’s easy to see how the DFW region shot up the rankings this year. The staggering 2025 totals represent millions of dollars more in lost value and 2 million more incidents of theft this year compared to 2024. Yikes.
“Meanwhile, Dallas-Fort Worth makes its second appearance and San Antonio cracks the list for the first time in three years, reflecting the growing vulnerability of suburbs in Texas’s booming metro corridors,” the report noted.
The proliferation of doorbell cameras and social media shaming has clearly not deterred thieves in Texas, although the Safewise report states that the number of packages and total dollar loss have decreased nationwide.
FBI crime statistics and Safewise survey data were used to compile this year’s report. And speaking of the FBI, Texas is one of at least 10 states where being a porch pirate is a felony.
In 2019, House Bill 37 made poaching piracy a felony by creating the offense of mail theft and significantly increasing the penalties from misdemeanor to felony charges, depending on certain factors, including the number of victims.
