8 ms·
If he had used e.g. the USPS mail service, would it then have been mail fraud instead? Similar sentencing?
by tpmx 3y ago
If he had used e.g. the USPS mail service, would it then have been mail fraud instead? Similar sentencing?
- kstrauser 3y agoYes. Also, you do not want the Postal Inspectors showing up looking for you. Like, for real.
- squintychino 3y agoStory time? What makes Postal Inspectors so feared.
- abfaqb 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDmA2xoIoFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDmA2xoIoFU
- tpmx 3y agoI mean, if we're going there, there is this comical yet informative and strangely relevant Brooklyn Nine-Nine (thanks djbusby, for the correction) scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5S74kKimFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5S74kKimFs Jake (Andy Samberg) and Charles (Joe Lo Truglio) form an unlikely alliance with Jack Danger (Ed Helms), a nerdy lead investigator at the United States Postal Inspection Service, as they embark on a mission to crack the case to bring down a drug dealer.
- djbusby 3y agoIt's B99 not 30 Rock
- actionfromafar 3y agoI don’t but I was surprised to learn they have guns. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspection_Service https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspect...
- SkipperCat 3y agoIn America, its surprising to find out someone does NOT have a gun.
- devmor 3y agoThey are well trained, judicious and exacting in their conduct. They do not screw around and they do everything by the book. They're like what we wish regular police officers were.
- acdha 3y agoI credit a lot of that to not being part of the homeland security culture: they work for the post office, their job is keeping the idea that you do NOT mess with US mail. I think a lot of the problems with cop culture come back to the idea that they’re basically soldiers separate from the community and doing such an important job that some collateral abuse just has to be expected.
- zinclozenge 3y agoSome agencies, ones you might not even expect like the USPS and FDA, also have law enforcement powers, but have very narrow jurisdiction (relative to general law enforcement agencies like the FBI). So when a case actually does fall under their jurisdiction, they execute their duties "with extreme prejudice", so to speak. Assuming the story from the OP you replied to is true, the fact that they arrested the police officers would show how seriously they take their duties, even if the officers tampering with the mail was due to carelessness while they themselves were performing their duty.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoNotably, if you have a counterfeit dollar bill it's the secret service that deals with it. I've read of someone who worked at a bank who was told that after getting a counterfeit, looked them up in the phone book, and they dealt with it promptly.
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoStill not as wild as the fact that while everyone was ridiculing Trump for instituting a space force, they have had a weather force, officially the "NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps", since 1917. But in all fairness, the distinctions are all pretty arbitrary, I'm sure people were laughing as much when the navy spun off their weather stuff and when the army spun off their flying stuff as they do now with the air force spinning off the space stuff.
- lost_tourist 3y agoWe laughed at it because it was the product of someone who isn't really known for original thoughts or consideration of complex concepts, so we all kind of assumed it was just a joke.
- Tabular-Iceberg 3y agoWho, Donald Rumsfeld?
- 3y ago
- easterncalculus 3y agoFor one the Postal Inspection service consistently has a high conviction rate around 98%[0]. Whether that's due to operational excellence or the ability to unwrap evidence for a living is subject for discussion. [0]: https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2019/pb22524/html/cover.htm https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2019/pb22524/html/cov...
- xwdv 3y agoI once committed mail fraud when I was 17 years old. I had been using the return address as a destination address on envelopes to send mail to places for free without stamps. Finally got caught one day at the local branch. Postal Inspectors said I could face 20 to 30 years in federal prison.
- kylecazar 3y agoIn other words just not putting stamps at all, and the postal service would 'return' it to the address listed as return (which is actually your destination)?
- selimthegrim 3y agoDon't they stamp "postage due" on it if you're short postage?
- zie 3y agoThey do, but if you put it in a public post box(like say @ the post office), the only way they know where to send it is to the return address.
- WinstonSmith84 3y agoThat's insane. 20 to 30 years in federal prison for having defrauded the post of how many letters? Imagining you've been sending couple of letters a weeks at most, that's like what? $10 per months!?
- civilitty 3y agoThat's just the maximum they use to scare people with. Federal sentencing guidelines aren't that severe and a first time offender with something as mild as using the return address to send a few letters would plead out to a few hundred or thousand dollar fine and maybe probation, say nothing of the fact that the OP was underage. IANAL but to get 20 years they'd have to commit a massive fraud that ended in some serious damage like costing victims million of dollars with some other mitigating circumstances.
- theideaofcoffee 3y agoYep, don't fuck with Postal Inspectors. Anecdotal, second-hand story I remembered being told by a former colleague with some significant time working in the Postal service: state or city police pulled over a contracted semi truck carrying mail from one station to the other on suspicion of running un-taxed cigarette shipments from a reservation manufacturer. Because the semi was contracted by the postal service, they had the requisite security: tags, seals and the magical panic button in the cab of the tractor. The driver pushed the button when the state/city police broke the seal and started rummaging through parcels which summoned the inspectors, guns drawn to the scene. Apparently the Postal Inspectors arrested the -police- at that scene on breaking and entering mail facilities. Some of the details pertaining to why the shipment was actually legal and the police didn't have cause/jurisdiction yadda yadda yadda I don't remember, but still a good story even if the telling of it by my former colleague was more engaging than I can recount.
- Arrath 3y agoThat reminds me of a story from a good friend who works in the Idaho National Labs, which have some areas under rather tight security. As the story goes, one of the scientists there copped a warrant high grade enough for the Federal Marshals to come by and make an arrest. They were stopped at one of the gates into a more secure area, asked their business, and told that security would send out the person in question. The Marshals balked at this and demanded to be let in to make the arrest, lest the fugitive make good an escape somehow. After security asked for their requisite clearance, which the Marshals could not provide, it continued to escalate. Fingering their pistol butts, the Marshals insisted they were on lawful business and must be let in, while the guards with rifles replied that by all means the Marshals might make their entry but as armed intruders into a secure laboratory they would promptly get shot. The pissing match took long enough that the fugitive was finally marched up to the gate and taken into custody before it could escalate further, at this point I believe the Marshals were on the phone with their higher ups trying to plead their case to be let in.
- kens 3y agoThe version of that story that I read is much longer, by Funranium Labs. It is entertainingly written, but I wonder how much is urban legend: https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2018/09/the-fringes-of-regulation/ https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2018/09/the-fringes-of-regulat...
- felipemnoa 3y agoYou really need to tells us how you learned not to mess with Postal Inspectors. Sounds like a really interesting story is lurking behind your post...
- newZWhoDis 3y agoThis hasn’t been my experience. Recently reported a large problematic activity involving hundreds of mailboxes. The post office told me to call the postal inspectors, and the postal inspectors said call my local office. Idk where the “postal inspectors are bad ass” meme comes from online, but from my sample size they’re just as useless as any other government org.
- missedthecue 3y agoI was going to say the same thing. My passport was stolen from a mail truck a few years ago and the last update I got from the postal inspectors was that they gave up and told me I wasn't getting my parcel back, and that I should cut my losses. And that was only about 2 weeks after the theft occurred, although they did send me automated "we haven't made progress" emails every 6 months until the case was officially closed. Their "investigation" might as well have never happened. For some reason, the internet thinks they are a group of James Bond secret agents. In my experience dealing with them, they are TSA level, totally indifferent schlubby federal workers waiting for their pension to vest.
- shiroiuma 3y agoI wonder how much the timeframe matters. I feel like a lot of stuff in the US has really gone down the toilet in the last 20 years, so maybe the Postal Inspectors really were badass 50+ years ago.
- bastardoperator 3y agoInterstate commerce? Just spitballing...