6 ms·

If this is really about a fine for counterfeiting a stamp, isn't £5 astonishingly low? In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison

If this is really about a fine for counterfeiting a stamp, isn't £5 astonishingly low? In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison. https://puryearlaw.com/2015/12/27/federal-counterfeit-postage-charges/ https://puryearlaw.com/2015/12/27/federal-counterfeit-postag...

chrisjj 3y ago
It is not. "Fine" is misreporting.
jcrawfordor 3y ago
The term "fine" seems confusing here. If you look at the form sticker, it seems apparent that £5 is just the on-delivery postage rate for an unpaid item. Different postal services handle this differently, but it's not unusual that a mailpiece that's lacking sufficient postage will be delivered to the recipient if they pay the postage, and it's also not unusual to make that a higher rate to account for the extra work involved in notifying the recipient and collecting it. Under some postal systems you can do this totally intentionally by marking a mailpiece COD. Maybe Royal Mail really does call this a fine, but it seems like it's just a typical higher "postage due" rate, thus the still rather nominal amount. Paying is optional for the recipient, they could just ignore the notification and it won't be delivered. The use of this approach for counterfeit seems sort of unwise considering the accusation involved in counterfeit postage, the USPS returns the piece to the sender in that case. But the items on the sticker make me think that Royal Mail has a general bent towards offering delivery no matter what. USPS would also return to sender if there's no postage at all, assuming the piece doesn't indicate the postage should be paid by the recipient. But you can see that the £5 sticker here is the same one used in that case. Sometimes the situation is complicated by postal policy, for example UPU policy for international mail tends to strongly prefer attempting to deliver a mailpiece over returning it, so "postage due" stickers seem more common on international mail (particularly since the international rates can be confusing and it's easier to accidentally underpay).
adamm255 3y ago
The issue is, the recipient is paying the fine. I send you a letter with a fake stamp, you pay. The £5 is an inconvenience, something you’d pay while tutting “what is the world coming to”. The sender is none the wiser. 7.3bn letters delivered in 22-23 (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/272795/post-monitoring-report-2022-23.pdf https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/272795/...) If 0.01% of that are tagged as counterfeit, that’s £3,650,000 in fines.
- jimnotgym 3y ago
  Makes me feel like sending a load of them to the Daily Mail...
  - DaSHacka 3y ago
    You kid, but I imagine this will quickly be abused by bad actors to harass victims of online doxxing as ordering pizzas and (in more serious cases) swatting is.
    - 1jbdg 3y ago
      You just don’t accept the letter, nothing to pay then
      - scotty79 3y ago
        Aren't public institution obligated to accept letters from the public?
  - washadjeffmad 3y ago
    It'd be a fair campaign for everyone to return their stamps by sending them affixed to complaint cards to their local councilperson or postmaster.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  It's worse than that. They introduced new stamps with barcodes and let you trade in your old lawfully obtained postage for the new barcoded stuff. They are marking some of their own lawfully obtained stamps as counterfeit and by dint of doing so stealing from their citizenry. It's roughly analogous to having bought speed guns from an incompetent vendor which sometimes read 200 kph no matter what the speed and insisting their cops continue to use them and ticketing per normal because it would be very expensive to replace the guns.
RobotToaster 3y ago
Forging stamps is up to 10 years in the UK, it's considered the same as counterfeiting money. But I think it has to be proven that it was intentional, so if the sender was simply scammed by someone selling fake stamps that wouldn't be prosecutable.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
duxup 3y ago
I knew a guy whose hobby was drawing fake stamps on envelopes and mailing them. He said someone eventually tracked him down and he was just told to stop doing it.
- mauvehaus 3y ago
  For today's lucky 10,000: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs
  - defrost 3y ago
    Good article, worth the read. This caught my eye: Boggs was first arrested for counterfeiting in England in 1986, and was successfully defended by the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC & Mark Stephens and acquitted. as the cases of Geoffrey Robertson are worth the rabbit hole, and the maintaining of transient accolades poses an update issue. I'll leave the QC -> KC edit for others and wonder how many dated QC's are on wikipedia and whether a QC who died before the Queen remains a QC or becomes a post mortem KC ?
    - dmurray 3y ago
      Surely it's correct to call him QC when writing about an event in 1986, but if it were in the present "Geoffrey Robertson KC wrote a recent memoir about his defence of Boggs...". This isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia style guide, as far as I can see, but for example the article on Princess Diana lists "spouse: Charles, Prince of Wales (later Charles III)". Transgenderism follows the opposite convention: once you transition to a new name and gender, you do so retroactively and all existing publications about you become dated, inaccurate and offensive. But I think that's the exception here in normal writing style.
      - defrost 3y ago
        I dare say, I wasn't sure how the QC | KC accolade was treated, but that does pass the sensible test. I note that: After being turned down by several leading lawyers, Dennis and Anderson secured the services of barrister and writer John Mortimer, QC (creator of the Rumpole of the Bailey series) who was assisted by his Australian-born junior counsel Geoffrey Robertson; Neville chose to represent himself. At the opening of the trial in June 1971 Mortimer stated that "... [the] case stands at the crossroads of our liberty, at the boundaries of our freedom to think and draw and write what we please". ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(magazine) is on the money, Mortimer was a QC at the time (1971) and Robertson was yet to be appointed (1988).
coldtea 3y ago
>In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison. For counterfeiting _A_ stamp? I guess in the US even breathing the wrong way is probably a serious federal felony. Land of the free, and all that...
- xnyan 3y ago
  there are countries where it’s not a serious crime to counterfeit postage? I think the penalty is double (up to 10 years) in the United Kingdom for example.
  - siva7 3y ago
    Yes, there are plenty. A serious crime requires serious damage in some countries so a single counterfeit won't tick that bar.
    - B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
      'De minimis non curat lex', as those very practical Romans put it
      - pigeons 3y ago
        I was going to reply, "Unum ex multis dica". It's always interesting when two people can see the same thing and come to opposite conclusions!
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  I doubt they ever prosecute anyone for counterfeiting a stamp, but if the law only forbid counterfeiting 100 stamps a counterfeiter would do 99 at a time.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    ... and it wouldn't be a crime, so what's the issue? :D
wkat4242 3y ago
It's not really a fine for using the counterfeit stamp. After all, the recipient pays it and they had nothing to do with acquiring or placing the stamp whatsoever. So it's not really a fine in the criminal sense. And I assume you don't admit any wrongdoing or avoid prosecution by paying it. It's more like a processing surcharge.

chrisjj 3y ago

It is not. "Fine" is misreporting.

jcrawfordor 3y ago

The term "fine" seems confusing here. If you look at the form sticker, it seems apparent that £5 is just the on-delivery postage rate for an unpaid item. Different postal services handle this differently, but it's not unusual that a mailpiece that's lacking sufficient postage will be delivered to the recipient if they pay the postage, and it's also not unusual to make that a higher rate to account for the extra work involved in notifying the recipient and collecting it. Under some postal systems you can do this totally intentionally by marking a mailpiece COD. Maybe Royal Mail really does call this a fine, but it seems like it's just a typical higher "postage due" rate, thus the still rather nominal amount. Paying is optional for the recipient, they could just ignore the notification and it won't be delivered. The use of this approach for counterfeit seems sort of unwise considering the accusation involved in counterfeit postage, the USPS returns the piece to the sender in that case. But the items on the sticker make me think that Royal Mail has a general bent towards offering delivery no matter what. USPS would also return to sender if there's no postage at all, assuming the piece doesn't indicate the postage should be paid by the recipient. But you can see that the £5 sticker here is the same one used in that case. Sometimes the situation is complicated by postal policy, for example UPU policy for international mail tends to strongly prefer attempting to deliver a mailpiece over returning it, so "postage due" stickers seem more common on international mail (particularly since the international rates can be confusing and it's easier to accidentally underpay).

adamm255 3y ago

The issue is, the recipient is paying the fine. I send you a letter with a fake stamp, you pay. The £5 is an inconvenience, something you’d pay while tutting “what is the world coming to”. The sender is none the wiser. 7.3bn letters delivered in 22-23 (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/272795/post-monitoring-report-2022-23.pdf https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/272795/...) If 0.01% of that are tagged as counterfeit, that’s £3,650,000 in fines.

jimnotgym 3y ago
Makes me feel like sending a load of them to the Daily Mail...
- DaSHacka 3y ago
  You kid, but I imagine this will quickly be abused by bad actors to harass victims of online doxxing as ordering pizzas and (in more serious cases) swatting is.
  - 1jbdg 3y ago
    You just don’t accept the letter, nothing to pay then
    - scotty79 3y ago
      Aren't public institution obligated to accept letters from the public?
- washadjeffmad 3y ago
  It'd be a fair campaign for everyone to return their stamps by sending them affixed to complaint cards to their local councilperson or postmaster.
michaelmrose 3y ago
It's worse than that. They introduced new stamps with barcodes and let you trade in your old lawfully obtained postage for the new barcoded stuff. They are marking some of their own lawfully obtained stamps as counterfeit and by dint of doing so stealing from their citizenry. It's roughly analogous to having bought speed guns from an incompetent vendor which sometimes read 200 kph no matter what the speed and insisting their cops continue to use them and ticketing per normal because it would be very expensive to replace the guns.

RobotToaster 3y ago

Forging stamps is up to 10 years in the UK, it's considered the same as counterfeiting money. But I think it has to be proven that it was intentional, so if the sender was simply scammed by someone selling fake stamps that wouldn't be prosecutable.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

duxup 3y ago

I knew a guy whose hobby was drawing fake stamps on envelopes and mailing them. He said someone eventually tracked him down and he was just told to stop doing it.

mauvehaus 3y ago
For today's lucky 10,000: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs
- defrost 3y ago
  Good article, worth the read. This caught my eye: Boggs was first arrested for counterfeiting in England in 1986, and was successfully defended by the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC & Mark Stephens and acquitted. as the cases of Geoffrey Robertson are worth the rabbit hole, and the maintaining of transient accolades poses an update issue. I'll leave the QC -> KC edit for others and wonder how many dated QC's are on wikipedia and whether a QC who died before the Queen remains a QC or becomes a post mortem KC ?
  - dmurray 3y ago
    Surely it's correct to call him QC when writing about an event in 1986, but if it were in the present "Geoffrey Robertson KC wrote a recent memoir about his defence of Boggs...". This isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia style guide, as far as I can see, but for example the article on Princess Diana lists "spouse: Charles, Prince of Wales (later Charles III)". Transgenderism follows the opposite convention: once you transition to a new name and gender, you do so retroactively and all existing publications about you become dated, inaccurate and offensive. But I think that's the exception here in normal writing style.
    - defrost 3y ago
      I dare say, I wasn't sure how the QC | KC accolade was treated, but that does pass the sensible test. I note that: After being turned down by several leading lawyers, Dennis and Anderson secured the services of barrister and writer John Mortimer, QC (creator of the Rumpole of the Bailey series) who was assisted by his Australian-born junior counsel Geoffrey Robertson; Neville chose to represent himself. At the opening of the trial in June 1971 Mortimer stated that "... [the] case stands at the crossroads of our liberty, at the boundaries of our freedom to think and draw and write what we please". ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(magazine) is on the money, Mortimer was a QC at the time (1971) and Robertson was yet to be appointed (1988).

coldtea 3y ago

>In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison. For counterfeiting _A_ stamp? I guess in the US even breathing the wrong way is probably a serious federal felony. Land of the free, and all that...

xnyan 3y ago
there are countries where it’s not a serious crime to counterfeit postage? I think the penalty is double (up to 10 years) in the United Kingdom for example.
- siva7 3y ago
  Yes, there are plenty. A serious crime requires serious damage in some countries so a single counterfeit won't tick that bar.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
    'De minimis non curat lex', as those very practical Romans put it
    - pigeons 3y ago
      I was going to reply, "Unum ex multis dica". It's always interesting when two people can see the same thing and come to opposite conclusions!
boomboomsubban 3y ago
I doubt they ever prosecute anyone for counterfeiting a stamp, but if the law only forbid counterfeiting 100 stamps a counterfeiter would do 99 at a time.
- justinclift 3y ago
  ... and it wouldn't be a crime, so what's the issue? :D

wkat4242 3y ago

It's not really a fine for using the counterfeit stamp. After all, the recipient pays it and they had nothing to do with acquiring or placing the stamp whatsoever. So it's not really a fine in the criminal sense. And I assume you don't admit any wrongdoing or avoid prosecution by paying it. It's more like a processing surcharge.