Feds Say Millions of Parcels from China Sported Fake Postage

by: Nonesuch

Good for the Feds.  Enough of Make China Great Again.  Feds need to do more.  Marketplaces also need to weed out sellers of sheets and coils of fake US and UK postage stamps and even rolls of USPS barcode tracking labels.  Just today I reported numerous listings to Mercari.  No action taken that I can see.  

Surely the marketplaces vaunted AI tools could and should spot and delete these listings, which are often by new sellers with no or minimal previous sales.  These sellers aren't dumb - they disappear after a couple of sales, then reappear under new names.  

Ina, great for you to shine more light on this problem.  But take care, I suspect this is organized crime, not just a few casual operators.  

by: mjr55

And my comment was deleted why? Sellers have enough issues with these fools overseas not to mention the $150 MILLION DOLLARS IN FAKE POSTAGE. F*ck them.  

by: Zarzuella

34 million parcels sent with fake postage and she appears to have a plea deal pleading guilty to one count with a maximum sentence of 5 years.

Who says crime does not pay.

by: DingDong

I have reported these sellers directly to the manufacturers.
I have reported stamps to the post office, LV purses to LV Mfg and so on with links to their stores and listings.
I have seen stores disappear.

Now if I can report purchases from other sites that use Amazon "Gift Receipts" for their outside businesses. Can't report them to Amazon unless you have an Amazon account and don't want one. I have all the copies from purchases with the packages, gift receipts and packing slips.

by: kazaly

Sounds like a pretty light sentence given the numbers involved.
No mention of the net profit to the accused, though just the 5 month avg for the period described 34mil items @6.8mil per month.
They were in business for 40 months though, so, giving a generous discount for slow months let's say they averaged 3mil per month over the scheme's lifetime.
If they were returning just $1 profit per item, that would have netted them $120,000,000!
So each of the 2 accused earned $60,000,000 each?
Ok, I'd probably have to think hard about a 5 year stretch for $12,000,000 p.a.
Some dodgy accounting could probably hide a fair part of that.
A large marketing bill to some $1 company in a solicitor's office in the Virgin Islands works for any number of US businesses and that money cannot be recovered.

by: spooky

Plus the fact the markets are being flooded with counterfeit postage stamps and are nearly impossible to detect. I would bet the USPS is out billions in income past few years. All are coming from China

by: Modlcitizn

Counterfeit US postage stamps are an epidemic!  Everywhere you look you see the ads for rolls of first class stamps (Forever Stamps now cost 68 cents) for as low as $20 a roll on eBay, Facebook and other venues.

Every time I see them on Facebook I hit the button to report the ad and the only appropriate choice is “Misleading or Scam” so I choose this. There should be a box for “Counterfeit” and then there is no place for a comment.

Reporting these is like playing Whack A Mole. They just keep popping up.. different company names etc.

I never got any response from Facebook until yesterday telling me they reviewed my complaint and the ad doesn’t violate their community standards!

There is a good educational video on the subject. Go to YouTube and search for “Wayne Youngblood” and it comes right up.

by: quirkyantiques

So let me get this straight. They defrauded $150,000,000 and are looking at 5 years in prison? Hands up everyone that would go to prison for 5 years for $30,000, 000 a year. I'll go first *puts hand up*

by: Geetar

and who said crime doesnt pay? It seems to pay $150 Mil, after a 5 year stretch.
I bet that money is in an account somewhere just waiting till they get out! Maybe not 150 mil, but even if it's 5, they're set for life.

by: comments

So over 5mo at and average of 6.8 million packages is about 34 million packages. So that is 34 million counts and they only get 2 charges?

Why did they have to commit the same crime 34 million times to get caught? They are calling that a win? If I was the prosecutor I wouldn't be taking a victory lap! If a maximum 10 years is on the table for a white collar crime and a plea agreement has been reached........ it is the criminals that should be taking the victory lap.

How many more people are doing this and not meeting the 34 million count threshold?

I think DeJoy is done "delivering for America" and has now begun the delivering for China campaign. Maybe the tax payers can buy China a new fleet of electric mail trucks too. At least in China they don't have pension funds for the US tax payers to bail out using "covid relief appropriations". How does packages sitting in trailers for up to 3 months translate to a need for a new fleet of trucks anyway?

Business owners pay the highest taxes and use the post office much more than regular citizens. Surely there will be no further need for the PRC to rubber stamp every rate hike and continue inventing new classes of mail to bypass the pesky limits of said increases?

I'm almost glad they got away with it.

by: toolguy

Fake US Postage is available all over facebook, I've reported hundreds of sellers of fake US Postage, the US Postal Inspection Service could care less.  

by: mjr55

Shocking.....Chinese seller in California? I don't believe it. Sounds like 99.9% of the other POS sellers like that from China.

by: MilesT

Counterfeiting of postage is an emerging issue in the UK too, since the recent changeover that the majority** of pre-printed stamps are only valid if the stamp has an intelligent barcode.  (Royal Mail has an ongoing swap-out programme to exchange stocks of unused non-barcoded stamps, which now cannot be used, for barcoded stamps to equivalent value).

And the counterfeiting is impacting 2 ways:  
* some senders are getting to send items at very low cost by using counterfeits (printed abroad and shipped in, often sold on eBay and similar),
and,
* people using legitimate stamps (bought through reputable sources including Post Office/Royal Mail themselves) are getting fined (£5) for insufficient postage because the intelligent barcode is seen as already used i.e. the counterfeiters have cracked the algorithm used for generating the single use barcode numbers

What's worse is the **recipient** is getting the fine £5 plus making good the postage which has to be paid before the item is released (although that will change soon, items with "reused" stamps will be returned to sender, if there is a return address and the sender will be fined).  Valid but insufficient postage (i.e. barcodes valid) will still be charged to recipient plus a admin fee.

The issue doesn't seem to be impacting senders who are using print on demand postage (different unique number range for the barcode?) or commercial senders who have an account with Royal Mail and also generate their own shipping labels using software (directly connected to Royal Mail APIs or via a carrier management solution like GFS, Auctane/Metapack or similar).  The latter option is relevant to the US case reported here but we haven't seen similar large scale cases in the UK from operators of inbound leg of business performing parcel brokerage/groupage (some sellers use such services themselves, including Temu and sellers on SheIn, and eBay/Amazon "International" programmes also rely on groupage services to redispatch customs cleared parcels in the UK via Royal Mail/Parcelforce or Evri or Amazon Parcel)

**not all UK stamps are barcoded--commemorative issues (i.e. stamps with pretty pictures instead of a plain King's head) are still valid for use and new commemoratives--several issues per year, as publicity and to keep up interest in collectors of first day covers--are not always barcoded as it makes the stamps look ugly.