The difference is that with porch piracy, the person living at the address is uncooperative. FedEx won’t take the package unless you hand it to them or make it

The difference is that with porch piracy, the person living at the address is uncooperative. FedEx won’t take the package unless you hand it to them or make it obvious that they’re supposed to take it. Hotels are generally cooperative: If you call a hotel and tell them that you incorrectly sent a package to their address (maybe you ordered it months ago when you were staying at the hotel but the package was held up in customs) and need them to forward it to your home address, they will oblige. If you directly pay the carrier to pick it up instead of paying the hotel to re-mail it, they have even fewer reasons to ask questions. Sure the hotel could try to verify whether you really stayed there but that’s not easy and would annoy real customers who didn’t pay for the room and don’t have their name on the bill. Either way the hotel isn’t taking any risks (beyond the nebulous “liability” that you can’t avoid unless you live in a padded cell) Oh and LEOs don’t care about $1k scams. The thief is likely much more concerned that one of their victims will show up at their house and gun them down. Recall that half of all Americans live in a home with at least one firearm. That’s the only reason why thieves hide their addresses.