Counterfeit Stamps Pass Postal Scrutiny

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Yep, and the news article cited mentioned none of this. Instead, they just left people with a scary feeling that they were being ripped off, with no information about what was actually going on.

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What could be better than opening the mailbox or the front door and finding an unexpected package? We all love surprises and gifts, but when these seemingly harmless free items come from a company or retailer, they may come with a higher cost than you realize. Oftentimes, this kind of unsolicited merchandise is part of a larger brushing scam, which is illegal in the U.S. and many other countries.


This is how it works.
A person receives packages or parcels containing various sorts of items which were not ordered or requested by the recipient. While the package may be addressed to the recipient, there is not a return address, or the return address could be that of a retailer. The sender of the item(s) is usually an international, third-party seller who has found the recipient's address online. The intention is to give the impression that the recipient is a verified buyer who has written positive online reviews of the merchandise, meaning: they write a fake review in your name. These fake reviews help to fraudulently boost or inflate the products' ratings and sales numbers, which they hope results in an increase of actual sales in the long-run. Since the merchandise is usually cheap and low-cost to ship, the scammers perceive this as a profitable pay-off.


This is why it's bad.
While it may appear to be a victimless crime—you did after all get some free stuff—the reality is that your personal information may be compromised. Often scammers obtain personal information through nefarious means and with ill-intentions, and use it for a number of scams and other illicit activities in the future.

Your fake review may prompt people to purchase worthless stuff.

In other instances, bad actors are using a person's address and account information to receive merchandise then steal it from the home before the resident is able to intercept it....

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parcel - Why do they need to send someone some stuff to write a fake review by the recipient? Why can't they just go straight to writing a fake review?

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Sorry, I did not remember that part in the frist post.

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On Tuesday, CBP officers in Louisville seized 178 counterfeit championship rings from various locations in China heading to West Chapel, Florida. The championship rings were for the Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, NBA Boston Celtics, and the University of Georgia, CBP said.

"Shipments like these prey on the many sports fans across the nation who may be duped into paying high prices for non-genuine products," LaFonda D. Sutton-Burke, Director, Field Operations-Chicago Field Office said in a statement.

CBP seized 27,107 shipments with Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) related violations in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021. If genuine, the total MSRP of the items would have been valued at over $3.3 billion. That figure, according to CBP, was a 152% increase compared to FY2020, when goods valued at $1.31 billion MSRP were seized for IPR violations.

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In fact, counterfeit products are not just a passing problem, but are part of a major global industry. Counterfeiting has grown from a $30B trade problem in the 1980s, and now exceeds $600B in trade. Trade data trends suggest that this number could soon rise to over $1.8 trillion, which is more than the gross domestic product of most countries. The explosion of e-commerce during COVID has also created a picture-perfect market channel for counterfeit goods, as it is easy to shut down a website selling these products at the request of Amazon or Alibaba, and open up another one the next day. Evidence shows that as e-commerce sales have grown from 10% of retail sales to more than 30% during COVID, this has offered a perfect opportunity for counterfeiters to exploit consumers buying products from their desktop.