U.S. postal inspectors shut down website selling counterfeit postage labels

I am pretty sure I bought from a seller using this (or something similar) on eBay. It sent me down a rabbit hole of reading about this type of scam that exploded earlier this year: https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2026-04/...Here's how it went down:https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/theperfectpartNote that they’ve sold so much that even 1k neutral ratings are barely registering - they have “100% positive feedback”I bought a cheap tool from this seller on ebay. Tracking number was provided showing my town as the destination. About four days later, I get an unprompted ebay message from the seller: “I monitor all my shipments and sometimes there are problems so I’m proactively sending you a new one, here’s a new tracking number.”The original tracking number showed a message I’d never seen before “Item seized - counterfeit postage”. The new tracking number showed postage that had been bought back in January, but never entered the mailstream. Huh.... reply: Related:...

The USPIS (mentioned in the article) once came to the federal prison I was at to tell inmates that using stamps as currency was illegal.There are flats and there are books. Flats are a sheet of 20 Forever stamps that you would get at a drug store. A book is 20 stamps, used or not used.Generally there are different values associated with flats because you can get cash for them on the streets. You can get them to the streets via an officer if you're ballsy. Or you can just find discreet ways to mail them.The value of a flat where I was at was about $13-$14 depending on your vendor. A book was generally worth $10. If you were buying bulk (and depending on who exactly you were buying from), that number could go down to $12 and $7 respectively.If you were buying from someone that was running a ticket (sports gambling) they had more incentive to get rid of their stamps. Some people had tens of thousands of dollars of stamps in their property and they wanted to convert them.If you were buying from someone running a store (think "buy and resell commissary"), their business model was dependent on flipping books of stamps in exchange for more commissary.... reply:...

30 years ago a teacher told me of an art student applying to a school. The student included two art pieces for the submission but was meant to provide three. A note suggested that they look at the stamp for the third submission. It was a hand drawn counterfeit that was good enough to get it delivered.Or so the story goes. reply: Russ Swain. Art Director role.Later became a currency counterfeiter.Go figure.

It says that the perp is Pakistani, and that he's been charged, but not that he's been arrested -- so he's presumably still free in Pakistan.I hear that normally what the FBI would try in such cases is to lure people onto US or extraditable territory. IIRC there were some rogue Chinese chemists, who owned companies that sold fentanyl intermediates and were under secret indictment in the US, who were "invited to a VIP academic conference in Hawaii" and then arrested as soon as their flight landed.Seems clear that this Pakistani is a bit more circumspect. reply: Most countries when presented with evidence that someone who lives there did something criminal will arrest and turn the criminal over to the country the crime was committed in. Sometimes they will put some stipulation in (Europe commonly won't turn a murderer over until the country promises not to seek the death penalty for example), but in general criminals are turned over all the time....

So the USPS delivered these packages?There's no verification built into a USPS label? reply: Possibly. Sometimes delivery companies find it easier to just deliver them attempting to return to sender and dealing with headache of customer complaints since while it should have been clear to people buying the labels that they were not legit, a lot of people would be like "HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW? I WANT MY MONEY BACK!"Yes there is verification. Sometimes the label WAS valid but it was purchased with stolen credit card OR purchased then refunded after delivery to the client but before it entered the postal stream.EDIT: Remember, boxes can be dropped off before someone processes them. Just hand them random postal carrier OR put them in postal pickup box.

Oldest trick in the book: https://www.linns.com/news/fakery-and-counterfeiting-dates-b...

USPS "forever stamps" are (still?) being openly sold on Aliexpress and would be even harder to track.I would love to know how this worked. Is there a hacked credential somewhere allowing for legit, but otherwise unpaid labels? Are they stolen CCs? Something else? reply: What are the odds that it's just straight up stamp theft? (I don't know what Occam's razor would prefer; your guess is as good as mine.)

This is labels not stamps correct? How is that even possible? reply: There are lots of ways to send packages. Stamps are used for letters, but a package tends to have various restrictions and so they get a shipping label which is supposed to be proof that you paid the correct postage without having to find the correct stamps which would be really annoying.Business that ship a lot (which is probably most packages) don't go to the post office for each shipment. Instead they buy machines/printers/software/labels which allows them to print off the correct label, and also combines all the money into something they handle the money in one larger transaction. There are lots of options in the above for different needs, if you a shipping a package even once a week you should look into them - often you get a discount for something that is easy for you to do (sorting outgoing mail by zip code saves them a lot of money and so they will pass that on to you)Because there are so many options you can find one option and duplicate it easily enough and it will take them a while to catch it.

>Akram is charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to make and sell counterfeit postage stamps, five counts of making and selling counterfeit postage stamp labels, and four counts of wire fraud.i would love more insight into how they come up with the number of charges. why five counts of making/selling counterfeit postage stamp labels instead of 1 charge that covers all 5 million, or 5 million charges, etc.

Not sure if I should be horrified or impressed. That's an insane amount of postage labels sold.I wonder how many were returned to sender.

Come to think of it, who knows how many counterfeit postage stamps are in circulation? https://mailtheft.uspis.gov/

UPS is also full of holes. No verifications whatsoever.You can purchase a label from a reseller and then ship using that label to a different place at a different weight several times. Battled with this at a previous job.

Have an optional crypto stamp and prioritize it, generating extra income for postal services

I wonder who benefits from the postal service going under from scams like this

> Court records show Faheem Akram, 33, of Khanewal, Pakistan, operated LabelsBank.com, a website that allegedly sold counterfeit USPS postage at a fixed rate, typically charging $2 per labelWow! How did these pass through the USPS system so easily?

How is this even possible, I thought it was tracked via barcode? do they literally just sort everything by hand?

the lesson here is you do not fuck with the us postal inspector's service because they do not lose