Counterfeit US Postage - $60 Million In Lost Revenue

Here is an interesting news item:

A California woman is accused of shipping over 9 million parcels using counterfeit postage, costing the USPS $60 million in lost revenue.

https://www.businessinsider.com/wom...onths-2023-6
*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

I saw that on the news. I think they knew about it for some time. The lady's husband left the country and she took over the business. So it seems they are going after the biggest violators first. I just wonder if they are going to get the one an Wish and Amazon that has been sell counterfit postage. They have been selling rolls and booklet plains for a long time now.

Where do you see this going or do you think they are done with this one?

Uknjay,
You can easily search online and find a number of Chinese companies which are openly marketing and selling large quantities of counterfeit US postage. The USPS could address this at the 'source' level but this would then involve the overall American-Chinese trade relationship and I assume this would then start phones ringing in the offices of powerful elected US officials.
(My assumption is based upon the lack of action to stem the flow of fentanyl chemicals which would seem to be a higher priority than counterfeited merchandise.)
Don

"Counterfeit postage" does not mean just stamps, in means any counterfeit franking which may include postage stamps.

A read of the article indicates much of the counterfeit postage came from an out of date meter:


Within the boxes being shipped were found counterfeit postage stamps.

60 million here, one hundred million there and pretty soon you are talking about real money.

Also not mentioned is the lost revenue to other companies that operate legitimate businesses that were likely undercut. If found guilty, hope there is some time in the slammer for these folks; and hopefully some sort of restitution to the taxpayers who usually end up eating the bill.

That's not counting the people that reuse stamps that have gone through the mail uncanceled of which there are a multitude of them. both the U.S. & Canada are
no doubt losing more than $60 million.

Postal authorities need to step up and take action. Or this will continue down a path where stamps will become useless and not a viable hobby.

I see a ton of ads on Facebook for Forever stamps at huge mark downs. Some of them even use the USPS logo!! I've dug into a few of these ads (which triggers the algorithm to send me more such ads) and there are sometimes wording to the effect that these are genuine stamps from firms that have gone out of business, etc. But it still sounds fishy to me. When I've got time on my hands I send a report to FB and occasionally I'll get a response saying they've taken the site down for being fraudulent.

Even if the financial loss isn't enough to justify cracking down on these, the loss of credibility in the system is another good reason for postal authorities to take it seriously.

If you visit the Postal Inspector's website it sounds like they are, but there sure a lot of these suspicious looking "deals".

There are over 300 listings on Ebay right now for Forever stamps and almost every single one is for fake stamps. The target price seems to be around $15 per 100 stamps (huge red flag) with some even showing as shipping FROM CHINA. Ebay is obviously not trying very hard to crack down and if I can just do a two second search and find these where is the USPS.



https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nk...100&_sacat=0

The USPS just proposed the next increase in basic first class one ounce postage to 68 cents. The US Government is not going to confront China over this issue and the Deep State swamp creatures in Foggy Bottom probably see it as trivial in the global scheme of things. So perhaps USPS is merely factoring its losses from counterfeits into the postage increases.

More counterfeits:

https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamp...ostalHistory

https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamp...it-s-too-big

Its crazy that they can just pass on through, a counterfeit that is just way too big vs the original. No doubt most people don't know or care.

Maybe I should change my username to "Pollyanna" but maybe if we all write to our congressional delegations and complain? Could the APS take this up and push the issue with Congress and/or the USPS?