9 ms·

> According to Citizens' Advice, if an item is addressed to you, there has been no previous contact with the company, and it arrives out of the blue, then you c

by ardy42 6y ago

> According to Citizens' Advice, if an item is addressed to you, there has been no previous contact with the company, and it arrives out of the blue, then you can keep it. You might not want to, through. I an was almost-victim of another scam where the scammers opened an account at Best Buy using my information with (someone else's) stolen credit card, and ordered a laptop and shipped it to my address. I returned it to the store immediately and notified Best Buy of the scam, but the next work day a FedEx guy came with a prepaid label (from the scammers) to pick it up. The idea apparently was to confuse me about the return, so I'd accidentally ship the laptop to the scammers rather than Best Buy. It would've worked too, but I'd already returned the package in person and called the police (because I'd assumed the scammer's plan was to steal it from my doorstep). I didn't realize something was wrong with the pickup until the Fedex guy was almost ready to drive away, but I waved him down to get a look at the label. The name/address on the was that of a recent immigrant living in New York City. My understanding is that he's probably just a schmuck who got taken in by some fake work from home scam to transship the stolen items. He may even think he's working for Best Buy to process returns. In any case, I think if I'd kept the laptop I'd have been guilty of receiving stolen property, at least. At worst, I could have been assumed to be a bumbling scammer and charged with credit card fraud (though, being a white professional worker, that probably wouldn't happen since I would probably be given the benefit of the doubt, but other people wouldn't be so lucky).

sevencolors 6y ago
At first seems wildly overly complicated for a laptop. But sounds like they're trying to scale up credit card fraud using the layers as buffer
- pessimizer 6y ago
  Most people have to work a week or two to make $1000.
  - Kiro 6y ago
    Worldwide, the median annual salary is $3000.
    - x87678r 6y ago
      Yeah I was going to say in Nigeria its like $1200 a year - so half makes less than that.
      - genewitch 6y ago
        The word median literally means that half make more and half make less, in that context.
        yyyuutt 6y ago
        no kidding
- ardy42 6y ago
  > But sounds like they're trying to scale up credit card fraud using the layers as buffer Yes, and also discourage law enforcement. AFAIK, $800 is a relatively small potatoes theft. New York is across state lines, and I reported it to the local police (who said the jurisdictional issues would make it a lot more complicated). The only person who's involved that I know of was is a little fish likely was there to take most of the risk to protect the masterminds (and likely doesn't know anything about them, anyway), so going after him probably won't accomplish much, anyway. My guess is they'll get away with this until the feds get involved.
sandworm101 6y ago
>> there has been no previous contact with the company Every law student is given that speech. There used to be a specific scam targeting new lawyers. When a new law office was setup it would be sent books and lawyer-related equipment, along with a bill for payment. The scammers hoped the bill would just be paid without further inquiry. So law students are now warned and told that they can keep such "gifts". But that isn't how the real world works. Who here doesn't have any previous contact with amazon? What if the package contains something very illegal (drugs etc) and the police are watching it? That will be a fun afternoon. Or what if your new address, previously perhaps a vacant house, is being used by someone buying illegal stuff? Yesterday he would pick it up from the door of an empty house. Today the package is inside the house. Unrequested deliveries should not be treated lightly.
- userbinator 6y ago
  Obviously if it's something you don't want, you don't have to keep it.
- lostgame 6y ago
  I have never and likely will never register for an Amazon account. When parcels show up mistakenly (and they do!) with that 'Prime' label I know right away I didn't have anything to do with me. :3 There's a lot of reasons I will never register for an Amazon account; the majority of which are directly related to the treatment of their employees, and if it wasn't that, it would be Amazon's complete unwillingness to do something about the litany of fake products filling it's virtual shelves, or the fake reviews that make it so we can't differentiate between the real product and fake. I hardly believe I am the only person on Hacker News to have also held out. Seeing Bezo's net value vs. what employees are paid is enough to make it worth going down the road and paying a couple dollars extra. I remember when COVID first broke out and Amazon refused to cover even sanitizer or masks for their employees, much less any extra compensation for volunteering to help keep the world together in a massive disaster. Amazon epitomizes the 'slavery with extra steps' phrase from Rick and Morty, and additionally epitomizes the truly horrific nature of inequality of wealth.
  - 6y ago
ndesaulniers 6y ago
> I think if I'd kept the laptop I'd have been guilty of receiving stolen property It sounds like the laptop was paid for, but potentially with stolen credit cards? Is that the same as the laptop being considered stolen property?
- ardy42 6y ago
  > It sounds like the laptop was paid for, but potentially with stolen credit cards? Is that the same as the laptop being considered stolen property? I'm not a lawyer, but that's my logic. The situation definitely wasn't on the up an up, and I'm not taking any legal risk over an $800 laptop I don't want. Morally, I knew who the rightful owner was (Best Buy), so I returned it to them.
bogwog 6y ago
> The name/address on the was that of a recent immigrant living in New York City How did you gather so much information from a shipping label?
- ardy42 6y ago
  > How did you gather so much information from a shipping label? Google. The name was pretty unique, and I found his wedding website (IIRC). Street view showed the address was pretty clearly a (large) apartment building. Now that I think about it, it's possible that the name was another stolen identity, but somehow I doubt it.
kbenson 6y ago
> The name/address on the was that of a recent immigrant living in New York City. My understanding is that he's probably just a schmuck who got taken in by some fake work from home scam to transship the stolen items. He may even think he's working for Best Buy to process returns. Given I just cleared some quarantines spam from some outgoing mailspools this morning on a hacked account where the spam in question was offering jobs to people to work from home "accepting deliveries, unpacking and checking the contents, and then mailing it on" promising something like $2900/mo (yeah, right), I suspect you're right that it's some random person taken in.
gerdesj 6y ago
Weirdly written article. It seemed to start in the US and then sidle off east to the UK. It kicks off like this: "It has hit the headlines after thousands of Americans received unsolicited packets of seeds in the mail, but it is not new." ... and then seems to give our American friends advice that is completely useless to them: Citizen's Advice Bureau (CAB) is a UK setup. Which? is a UK magazine with an attendant "Campaign group". Prof "cyber-security expert at Surrey University" works near London. This looks like a rather lazy "pally" article. That's a term I've just invented to describe a filler piece that will probably work OK in the UK and US if you don't look too closely. You describe a situation in one country and then fill in with vague waffle that looks reasonable to other similarish jurisdictions. This sort of nonsense is happening more and more often. Lazy journalism.
- koyote 6y ago
  Most BBC articles are written with the UK in mind. In this case it gives advice to the UK readers in case they receive unsolicited packages, like the ones they recently reported about in their US section. I do not see how this is lazy journalism, it's just an article that caters for a UK audience written by a UK media company.
dheera 6y ago
> It would've worked too I'm not fully following -- how would it have worked? The scammers sent you something, and then issued a FedEx label to pick it back up. It wasn't your credit card anyway, so ultimately it didn't involve you other than that someone misused your name. That someone else would have to create a case with their credit card company (and probably win), and you wouldn't be at risk of losing any money either way. In any case though, if you received something out of the blue, you could probably just be silent, hold onto the item, not answer any e-mails or calls, and even in that case, hang up and call back the law enforcement to make sure you actually are talking to law enforcement. (I block unscheduled calls anyway, and throw away all unsolicited mail unopened, so they wouldn't reach me anyway.) That way, either the scammers themselves lose $ (you win and get to keep the item) or the scammers have to call law enforcement (in which case you're innocent and maybe just have to return the item, but the scammers have now exposed themselves to the law).

by ardy42 6y ago

sevencolors 6y ago

At first seems wildly overly complicated for a laptop. But sounds like they're trying to scale up credit card fraud using the layers as buffer

pessimizer 6y ago
Most people have to work a week or two to make $1000.
- Kiro 6y ago
  Worldwide, the median annual salary is $3000.
  - x87678r 6y ago
    Yeah I was going to say in Nigeria its like $1200 a year - so half makes less than that.
    - genewitch 6y ago
      The word median literally means that half make more and half make less, in that context.
      - yyyuutt 6y ago
        no kidding
ardy42 6y ago
> But sounds like they're trying to scale up credit card fraud using the layers as buffer Yes, and also discourage law enforcement. AFAIK, $800 is a relatively small potatoes theft. New York is across state lines, and I reported it to the local police (who said the jurisdictional issues would make it a lot more complicated). The only person who's involved that I know of was is a little fish likely was there to take most of the risk to protect the masterminds (and likely doesn't know anything about them, anyway), so going after him probably won't accomplish much, anyway. My guess is they'll get away with this until the feds get involved.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> there has been no previous contact with the company Every law student is given that speech. There used to be a specific scam targeting new lawyers. When a new law office was setup it would be sent books and lawyer-related equipment, along with a bill for payment. The scammers hoped the bill would just be paid without further inquiry. So law students are now warned and told that they can keep such "gifts". But that isn't how the real world works. Who here doesn't have any previous contact with amazon? What if the package contains something very illegal (drugs etc) and the police are watching it? That will be a fun afternoon. Or what if your new address, previously perhaps a vacant house, is being used by someone buying illegal stuff? Yesterday he would pick it up from the door of an empty house. Today the package is inside the house. Unrequested deliveries should not be treated lightly.

userbinator 6y ago
Obviously if it's something you don't want, you don't have to keep it.
lostgame 6y ago
I have never and likely will never register for an Amazon account. When parcels show up mistakenly (and they do!) with that 'Prime' label I know right away I didn't have anything to do with me. :3 There's a lot of reasons I will never register for an Amazon account; the majority of which are directly related to the treatment of their employees, and if it wasn't that, it would be Amazon's complete unwillingness to do something about the litany of fake products filling it's virtual shelves, or the fake reviews that make it so we can't differentiate between the real product and fake. I hardly believe I am the only person on Hacker News to have also held out. Seeing Bezo's net value vs. what employees are paid is enough to make it worth going down the road and paying a couple dollars extra. I remember when COVID first broke out and Amazon refused to cover even sanitizer or masks for their employees, much less any extra compensation for volunteering to help keep the world together in a massive disaster. Amazon epitomizes the 'slavery with extra steps' phrase from Rick and Morty, and additionally epitomizes the truly horrific nature of inequality of wealth.
- 6y ago

ndesaulniers 6y ago

> I think if I'd kept the laptop I'd have been guilty of receiving stolen property It sounds like the laptop was paid for, but potentially with stolen credit cards? Is that the same as the laptop being considered stolen property?

ardy42 6y ago
> It sounds like the laptop was paid for, but potentially with stolen credit cards? Is that the same as the laptop being considered stolen property? I'm not a lawyer, but that's my logic. The situation definitely wasn't on the up an up, and I'm not taking any legal risk over an $800 laptop I don't want. Morally, I knew who the rightful owner was (Best Buy), so I returned it to them.

bogwog 6y ago

> The name/address on the was that of a recent immigrant living in New York City How did you gather so much information from a shipping label?

ardy42 6y ago
> How did you gather so much information from a shipping label? Google. The name was pretty unique, and I found his wedding website (IIRC). Street view showed the address was pretty clearly a (large) apartment building. Now that I think about it, it's possible that the name was another stolen identity, but somehow I doubt it.

kbenson 6y ago

> The name/address on the was that of a recent immigrant living in New York City. My understanding is that he's probably just a schmuck who got taken in by some fake work from home scam to transship the stolen items. He may even think he's working for Best Buy to process returns. Given I just cleared some quarantines spam from some outgoing mailspools this morning on a hacked account where the spam in question was offering jobs to people to work from home "accepting deliveries, unpacking and checking the contents, and then mailing it on" promising something like $2900/mo (yeah, right), I suspect you're right that it's some random person taken in.

gerdesj 6y ago

Weirdly written article. It seemed to start in the US and then sidle off east to the UK. It kicks off like this: "It has hit the headlines after thousands of Americans received unsolicited packets of seeds in the mail, but it is not new." ... and then seems to give our American friends advice that is completely useless to them: Citizen's Advice Bureau (CAB) is a UK setup. Which? is a UK magazine with an attendant "Campaign group". Prof "cyber-security expert at Surrey University" works near London. This looks like a rather lazy "pally" article. That's a term I've just invented to describe a filler piece that will probably work OK in the UK and US if you don't look too closely. You describe a situation in one country and then fill in with vague waffle that looks reasonable to other similarish jurisdictions. This sort of nonsense is happening more and more often. Lazy journalism.

koyote 6y ago
Most BBC articles are written with the UK in mind. In this case it gives advice to the UK readers in case they receive unsolicited packages, like the ones they recently reported about in their US section. I do not see how this is lazy journalism, it's just an article that caters for a UK audience written by a UK media company.

dheera 6y ago

> It would've worked too I'm not fully following -- how would it have worked? The scammers sent you something, and then issued a FedEx label to pick it back up. It wasn't your credit card anyway, so ultimately it didn't involve you other than that someone misused your name. That someone else would have to create a case with their credit card company (and probably win), and you wouldn't be at risk of losing any money either way. In any case though, if you received something out of the blue, you could probably just be silent, hold onto the item, not answer any e-mails or calls, and even in that case, hang up and call back the law enforcement to make sure you actually are talking to law enforcement. (I block unscheduled calls anyway, and throw away all unsolicited mail unopened, so they wouldn't reach me anyway.) That way, either the scammers themselves lose $ (you win and get to keep the item) or the scammers have to call law enforcement (in which case you're innocent and maybe just have to return the item, but the scammers have now exposed themselves to the law).