Tens Of Thousands Of $ Of Discount Forever Sheets

Whatt recourse does a consumer have if they receive counterfeit stamps? Moreover, will employees at a USPS post office authenticate the stamps and if they indicate they are counterfeit, does the person inquiring get detained/arrested, is the person free to go but the stamps automatically forfeited, or is the person free to go home with the stamps and seek a refund from the ebay seller?

If someone UNKNOWINGLY uses fake stamps they purchased online, do Postal Inspectors come to their residence and arrest them?

I have not heard or read any public service announcements in media from the USPS cautioning consumers about buying Forever stamps from third parties on ebay.

There are hundreds of Forever stamps sold by third parties daily on ebay. Why are people willing to take such a risk? I personally would only buy Forever stamps on ebay from the official USPS store, since it is illegal to knowingly use a counterfeit stamp and prosecution can occur under 18 U.S. Code §#8239;501. Of course the key word is knowingly. Even if you innocently purchased counterfeit forever stamps on ebay and used them, you would have to spend thousands on a defense attorney trying to prove he/she did not knowingly use them.

I am curious if anyone has been prosecuted under this section and what the outcome of the trial was. Are there truly innocent people in federal prison convicted of using counterfeit stamps they purchased online or at a bodega?

An average person can't detect a counterfeit Forever stamp from a genuine one. I think the USPS should make Forever stamps counterfeit proof and then educate consumers on how to detect counterfeit stamps.

Stamps are also used a form of currency in many prisons. ebay does not vet accounts.
https://www.wired.com/2011/01/st_prisoncurrencies/
http://prisonwriters.com/stamps-as-...y-in-prison/
Don

Employees at the post do not have the knowledge about stamps to examine anything. A counterfeit stamp on an envelope will not get you any acknowledgement in any way,shape or form. ebay does not concern itself with counterfeits. Postal inspectors have way bigger problems to deal with. The Feds have even larger crimes to handle. You will not even get a wink or smirk. I would not worry about "the big house."

At the present time, the USPS does not appear to have interest in adding security features (underprinting, elliptical perforations, interior die cuts, etc.) to its definitive stamps.

If you use a counterfeit stamp that is detected you will get your piece of mail back without it being delivered along with a Notice that lets you know that it was counterfeit. Besides the Feds not having the resources to deal with you it is virtually impossible to prove that you knew that it was fake. Just like drugs they want the bigger fish because of the resources it takes to reach prosecution. You not only have to arrest somebody, you have to compile the evidence to make it stick and that is expensive in so many ways. There are frequent arrests of people that buy large quantities of counterfeit stamps online and use them at their businesses. Claiming ignorance may not work if it is tens of thousands of dollars as was the case at a mailing/shipping business that would take peoples cash for mailing and use fake stamps. A $75,000 fine and jail time was the result because the owner used approximately $75,000 in fake stamps. I will try to find that story again and post it here.

Here is a beauty:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/p...feit-postage

My grandfather (the one who didn't collect stamps, somewhat oddly) was a regional inspector for the USPS back in the 40s-60s. I recall him saying one of the biggest issues back then - along with counterfeits - was postal money order fraud, sometimes involving employees.

You have shared a report of a U$D 39,000 loss, over several years, and look at all the work they had to put in to get a conviction.

By comparison, the folks selling postage on ebay are low-handing low-hanging fruit.

Conclusion: the stamps for sale on ebay are genuine, and the counterfeits are long gone.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I am assuming that before an envelope with counterfeit postage is returned to sender, the return address is noted by inspectors. If someone unsuspectingly purchased a coil of 100 Forever stamps on ebay that ended up being counterfeit and unknowing they were counterfeit, used them on 100 different letters, one would think that would draw the attention of inspectors.

I have seen negative feedback on ebay where people claim the discounted Forever stamps they purchased were counterfeit. Don't know how a buyer was informed they were counterfeit, but I bet they are not too pleased with having a "record" with the post office if their letter was returned to them.

Fake Forever stamp rolls on ebay:

https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamp...-stamps.html

@Torin, you vastly over-estimate the interest and capability of the US Postal Service to deal with counterfeit postage stamps. As others have indicated, USPS investigators have much bigger fish to fry (including cases involving wire fraud, drug and weapons smuggling, child pornography, and the like) and are unlikely to waste investigative and prosecutorial resources on a bunch of penny-ante criminals. You can stop fretting that a postal inspector is going to throw you in Federal prison for mistakenly using a counterfeit stamp. Loved your question about USPS employees authenticating stamps! If only!

Bud

Well I won't have to worry since I don't purchase 3rd party Forever stamps. It's just frustrating that laws aren't enforced and there are people getting away with defrauding the federal government and putting the USPS further in the red.

It would be great if the USPS would implement anti-counterfeit features on its stamps to where a consumer could purchase an inexpensive tool (similar to a counterfeit detector pen for currency) to detect a genuine vs a counterfeit stamp.

The question is what cost more, the anti-counterfeiting program, or the losses from counterfeiting?

The U.S. Postal Service reported revenue of $69.6 billion for fiscal year 2017 (October 1, 2016 - September 30, 2017), a decrease of $1.8 billion compared to the prior year.

It is hard to say how much the post office is loosing to counterfeit stamps, $1 million? $100 million? My guess is that it is far less than the nearly 2 billion in fluctuation of sales from one year to another.

So while the f thousands of dollars we see in these articles is a lot of money in our world, it is a speck in the post office's budget.

Counterfeit detection may be done by a human 'gee that stamp looks strange' but the majority of counterfeit stamps are found with counterfeit detection system at a mail distribution centers.

Last numbers I saw was that the USPS estimated a loss of approximately $135 million per year from counterfeit stamps. In the US, manufacturing or knowingly selling fake postage stamps is a federal crime punishable by fines and/or up to five years in prison.

The folks who are responsible for counterfeit detection are Postal Inspectors and Postal Police at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service https://www.uspis.gov/

Anyone can report counterfeit stamps using the handy 'Report A Crime' icon at the right hand bottom of every page in the site. (Select 'Mail Fraud' and under 'Type of Mail Fraud Complaint' select 'Merchandise and Services' and then select 'Misrepresentation of Product'.
Don