Broadband Tech > Security > Scam and Phishbusters > Spam flooding to hide something even more sinister

reply to MGD

Re: Spam flooding to hide something even more sinister

In my experience it means they tried to deliver it, but the address doesn't exist. It looks like someone requested that it be held, but someone screwed up and put it on the truck anyway.

I've had something similar happen, only it was me not being home and having asked them to hold it so I could pick it up. It got put on the truck, which didn't get back to the facility until after the lobby closed. I was *FURIOUS* because I would be out of town for the next week, at which point it would be returned to sender. A couple irate phone calls to the customer service line later, I got a call from the facility night manager offering to let me in to pick up my package. The stories that guy told me about delivery screwups...

Unfortunately, since you're not the sender, there's literally nil you can do to affect that package, short of physically intervening, and even then, those trucks look like they hurt when they hit you.

reply to garys_2k
The scammers don't usually re-direct packages from Fed-Ex because they would have to pay the extra shipping. Instead they e-mail the mule in the U.S. a used pre-paid USPS Shipping Label (and yes, USPS and FedEx and UPS don't cancel out the shipping numbers and the label can be used again for the same trip.

The unwitting mule receives stolen property purchased online with a stolen credit card, and then ships it overseas with a counterfeit prepaid shipping label sent by the scammer. It almost happened to me until I figured out what what going on, since the last thing an orphanage in Africa needs is a laptop computer and 5 channel surround sound system.

The hardest part was getting the stores to send me prepaid shipping labels so I could return all their stolen stuff instead of shipping it to Nigeria. And nobody cares. The local police said they couldn't do anything because they don't know that a crime was committed. Credit card companies didn't care when I called and gave them the stolen credit card numbers used to purchase the stuff, and the Secret Service never follows up when you report it.