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The question is, where is the food and beverage going to? Containers don't have $214k of a balanced variety of foods, they have thousands of boxes of cereal. No
by solatic 4y ago
The question is, where is the food and beverage going to? Containers don't have $214k of a balanced variety of foods, they have thousands of boxes of cereal. No thief is eating their way through a shipping container's worth of cereal.
Prior articles (e.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/the-fight-against-stolen-products-on-amazon-and-facebook-marketplace.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/the-fight-against-stolen-pro... ) have written about how Amazon is turning into a semi-legitimate fence for stolen goods; the seller-thief can list the stolen goods, ship to an Amazon warehouse, where Amazon provides the marketplace for a cut of the proceeds. The FTC may not care enough about Amazon turning into a front for counterfeit goods; will the FTC finally wake up and target Amazon for dealing in stolen goods?
- colechristensen 4y agoIt doesn’t work much if you’re selling individual stolen items but if you steal a truckload of something the FTC or whoever would be reasonable in requesting that lot codes/serial numbers/whatever identifying information be checked against a list of stolen items.
- londons_explore 4y agoSome countries (eg. Thailand) have a centralised government system for managing this. On every receipt, by law, is a unique barcode encoding the shop and purchase value. That barcode, when scanned, leads to a government webpage (and doing your taxes involves scanning each barcode for anything deductible, so many of the receipts get scanned). On that webpage, occasionally they ask for a photo of the best before label of the goods. The best before date usually includes the lot number. Now, the government has a list of lots of serial numbers and associated retailers. They can now easily punish those who regularly sell stolen goods.
- antihipocrat 4y agoIs cash still the dominant means of exchange in Thailand? If the discounted price of the good covered the potential deductible amount then no receipt would be needed.
- londons_explore 4y agoLots of people still want the receipt. I suspect there are both undercover sellers and buyers to find buyers willing to buy without a receipt, or sellers willing to sell without a receipt.
- KirillPanov 4y ago> doing your taxes involves scanning each barcode for anything So a dystopian police surveillance-state? Thanks but no thanks. The socially optimal amount of theft is not zero.
- londons_explore 4y agoI think you already live in that... Credit card networks already know everything you buy, and will happily hand that info over to government. At least this way you get the benefits of it.
- propogandist 4y agoNot quite, card networks only know transaction level information if the merchant processing the card transaction passes back level 3 data. Merchants only pass level 3 data to secure a processing % discount on network fees. This data can be used to mine user behavior by the card companies, and unless you opt-out of Visa/Mastercard's data mining program at the card level, they do this.
- londons_explore 4y agoI was under the impression that the vast majority of merchants do this though... And any that don't still need to keep records for tax purposes, and the authorities could still request that anytime and without your knowledge. It is frequent that news reports say "attacked with a hammer purchased by the defendants credit card earlier the same day". So it appears the facility to search card payments is fairly widely used.
- kasey_junk 4y agoMost merchants do _not_ send level 3 data. For the most part it’s only sent on travel related transactions or for government vendors.
- gruez 4y ago>It is frequent that news reports say "attacked with a hammer purchased by the defendants credit card earlier the same day". So it appears the facility to search card payments is fairly widely used. Not really, because the search could have happened in the opposite direction (eg. they ask the store for a list of transactions that were made with the suspect's card). I doubt they're asking visa/mastercard to give them a list of all hammers sold in the past month.
- NoZebra120vClip 4y agoWe don't really have receipts anymore here in the USA. I mean, we're supposed to, but it's on thermal paper, but everyone's printer is broken, and they'll try to send it in email, but oh the images are broken too, and the link expired after 29.25 days anyway. Proof of purchase is necessary for refunds. No refunds.
- kube-system 4y agoWe don’t have national business registration either.
- costco 4y agoThis already happens and its called LeadsOnline. When someone reports something stolen the serial number gets added to it. Pawn shops in most states are required to use it or something similar before they buy an item. eCommerce marketplaces do not have that requirement in most places. LeadsOnline does partner with eBay however.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoThe thieves sell to local independent stores that don't care that their wholesale price is too good to be true. That allows you to move low margin and short self life consumables without having to deal with Amazon.
- Kye 4y agoThere's an entire world of stores that sell "expired," discontinued, and massively discounted stuff. It's the stage after things have made their way through the Walmarts and Dollar Generals of the world. edit: DavidPeiffer correctly notes the air quotes. Packaging uses all kinds of phrasing to indicate when the manufacturer moves all responsibility to the store and the consumer.
- markdown 4y agoWow, it's legal to sell expired food in the US?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoMost food items have "sell by" dates that has very little to do with expiration. In fact a lot of food doesn't really expire at all if properly stored.
- dylan604 4y ago>In fact a lot of food doesn't really expire at all if properly stored. I would have to argue with the use of the word food here. We have been convinced items available in grocery stores is food, when it is really highly processed ingredients with loads of preservatives presented as food. I consider food the items sold along the exterior walls of the stores (at least in typical US store layouts).
- briHass 4y agoIt depends on the state and how the date is worded. You may have noticed some products list a 'best by' date, which really isn't the same as 'this will have gone bad by this date'. I think 'use by' is the magical phrase which implies something has expired. There's one of those stores near me, and as far as I've seen, they typically sell stuff near the expired date, not past it. Most consumers are turned off by buying truly expired foods.
- eunos 4y ago> . No thief is eating their way through a shipping container's worth of cereal. Resell online or even on street.
- astura 4y agoThey are selling it online https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/the-fight-against-stolen-products-on-amazon-and-facebook-marketplace.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/the-fight-against-stolen-pro... >Amazon , eBay and Facebook are the places where these stolen goods are being sold, and critics say they’re not doing enough to put an end to the racket. The companies disagree.
- maxerickson 4y agoSeems like valuable food cargo is gonna be stuff like liquor. Booze probably has better grey market value than most perishable items.
- washywashy 4y agoCould stores that are fronts for money laundering buy at inflated prices?
- acuozzo 4y agoThis obviously doesn't answer your question at scale, but lots of stolen "common" goods like cereal and deodorant are sold at places like this: http://www.northpointfleamarket.com/ http://www.northpointfleamarket.com/