U.S. postal inspectors shut down website selling counterfeit postage labels
postalemployeenetwork.com
postalemployeenetwork.com
Here's how it went down:
https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/theperfectpart
Note that they’ve sold so much that even 1k neutral ratings are barely registering - they have “100% positive feedback”
I bought a cheap tool from this seller on ebay. Tracking number was provided showing my town as the destination. About four days later, I get an unprompted ebay message from the seller: “I monitor all my shipments and sometimes there are problems so I’m proactively sending you a new one, here’s a new tracking number.”
The original tracking number showed a message I’d never seen before “Item seized - counterfeit postage”. The new tracking number showed postage that had been bought back in January, but never entered the mailstream. Huh. I suspect that buys them time while they re-ship.
I did eventually get the item after another tracking number was provided.
My suspicion is that the seller uses counterfit USPS postage on 'x' number of packages to juice their margins. If you look at the neutral reviews, you can see a pattern — slow postage, lost package, had to replace, blah blah. Look at the positives — rave reviews at how fast things are arriving. Probably because the seller is “paying” for higher end postage via scamming the USPS.
And only when they get caught by USPS do they need to re-ship an item. They must get away with it enough to make it worthwhile
I would assume that the tracking number has the address details tied to it (I mean, based on support claims with USPS it definitely does), but maybe there's some obscure package type where destination is not distinct and they abuse that in a pool with other sellers, then at the last mile it gets sorted appropriately?
Seems wild that this market even exists considering how USPS flat rate postage exists.
Was your package something heavy or extremely light which makes weight-based shipping more economical?
The tool I bought wasn't what you'd think of as a small, inconsequential item. I'd wager it was ~2lbs and was a automotive brake bleeder in a blowmolded case. Probably the size of an old-timey encyclopedia. Cheaply made of course (almost certainly an aliexpress item). The seller I bought from has what appears to be an aliexpress dropshipping supply chain -- they buy the tool for $, ship from a US warehouse in Florida for $$.
If you generate a random number even fitting the pattern and looks like a real one, the scan will fail with an error and fail to register tracking information every single step of the way that package gets scanned from dropoff at the retail postal office (this was the case) as bulk inbound pickup from USPS are only allowed for USPS verified partners.
Label creation (which generates the tracking number) is a billable action in their API. Some volume partners have pre-arranged/allocated tracking number segments assigned to the bulk volume partner/shipper (similar like how IP address v4 is assignment from IANA). And that pre-allocation tracking number range requires $$$$ contract in place. Billing that is post paid like cellphone bill.
Most retail shipping software (like shipengine, pirateship etc.) bills using the prepaid method, meaning you will have to pay for the label at the time label is generated.
Disclaimer: I used to work for a carrier that integrated a few dozens of global shipping carriers.
I get that they have reverse engineered how the numbers are created, but how are they showing up in USPS and UPS databases?
Are shipping platforms like shipengine getting these labels pre-made and this fake label seller has reverse engineered how these tracking numbers are created programmatically and are essentially using the ones allocated to these big shipping platforms?
We would never know how since that's the part USPS redacted heavily.
I wish Anthropic/OpenAI FDE take over USPS IT altogether.
Are you overestimating their validation capabilities? Maybe the validation just isn't that accurate or isn't always done, for efficiency.
I once desperately needed a (FedEx or UPS) package that was delayed. Tracking showed it in a facility about an hour away so I asked if I could pick it up there. I was told: 'It's not really there; our (customer-facing) tracking shows where packages should be.'
Their image of super-efficiency is for selling themselves. (If you are deep in e-commerce, you probably already know.)
A third-party seller on Amazon or eBay was including sheets of suspicious US postage stamps in product shipments, unsolicited, with full-color glossy notes offering more stamps in exchange for positive reviews.
(I took the stamps and note I received to a post office, where a manager agreed they looked suspicious, and I asked them forward it up the chain. I like the USPS as a trustworthy service and institution, and I hate counterfeiting.)
The USPS is also, ahem, rather incompetent, and their own report [1] shows that "mitigation efforts are limited, with no substantive approach to identify counterfeit stamps in the Postal Service network. While the Postal Service and the Postal Inspection Service have increased prevention-related efforts, the quantity of counterfeit stamps in the network remains unknown."
So the increased value of the stamps, the inability to change old Forever stamps, and the lack of enforcement have created a perfect storm for the counterfeiters.
[1] https://www.uspsoig.gov/reports/audit-reports/counterfeit-st...
Also if you mail stuff this way you’ll have mail inspected for bombs or anthrax.
Numbers for demonstration only
https://www.royalmail.com/sending/barcoded-stamps
There are still some "Forever" stamps (those with pictures on or Christmas Stamps) but the old non-QR code non-forever stamps stopped being legal a while back (but you can always swap them for the new ones for free).
I've had people try and reuse a QR-coded stamp, you just get a postcard saying there's an item of mail with invalid postage for you to collect (and pay for). You get to look at it before you decide whether to pay the fine or not and then your argument is with the sender to reimburse you or not.
This was almost my thought for mitigating USA stamp fraud. Exchange Forever stamps for $currentValue stamps, but show your ID so you’ll be subject to extra scrutiny if you try to trade in a million of them. (QR code’s better and more fair.)
What about the marginalized communities who don't have IDs, or are you saying USPS needs more security than federal elections?
The basic split between what has barcodes and what doesn’t it that the everyday “definitive” stamps (both 1st/2nd etc. and those with a direct monetary value) were withdrawn and reissued with barcodes, but commemorative and special stamps weren’t. Basically, stuff sold to stamp collectors to be put in a box and never used on postage doesn’t have them.
Reminds me of our monetary stamps. They were the old fashioned monetary value stamps which had a fixed value on it, so when the price hiked you could get 5ct/1ct stamps to add to get to the new rate, fixed value of the stamps stayed the same. People added real money to it since they were not going to buy a full sheet of 5ct stamps for one older one to compensate. And since the mail usually didn't care you sometimes got a free 5ct coin as recipient! (As a kid this was always fun to receive).
Fun thing is that those coins are way heavier than the paper so adding them might get you onto the next cost bracket making the whole excersize pointless.
They've been underfunded for a long time. Meanwhile they still have the legal requirement to deliver everywhere in the US. So the big guys like Amazon will happily deliver their own packages in densely populated areas where it's easily profitable. The areas where it's not can be done by USPS...
So basically the taxpayer is paying for Amazon to not have to deliver where it would be costly for them.
Just as a datapoint, the USPIS has a >= 98% conviction rate for cases that go to trial
He would buy a stamp in Spain for 30 centavos, then exchange it for a 5 cent stamp in the US. Spain’s currency was depreciating against the dollar, so you could make some surprising returns. Really, his numbers weren’t straight-up lies, it’s just that it would’ve been impractical at the time to transport enough stamps to make that payout occur.
But he NEVER did anything legal. In fact, he didn’t even receive his first attempt at successfully buying a small number of international reply coupons from a friend in Italy until his scam unraveled. And he’d never figured out how he could turn those coupons into cash.
And the reason his arbitrage excuse was caught so quickly (it was basically one summer that he was able to run his scam before his money ran out), was because the global supply of all the international reply coupons in the world were valued at significantly less than his revenues from his schemes, a fact experts pointed out to the local papers as the scam was happening. In fact, he even stopped telling new investors about the postal reply coupons scheme and had moved on to other lies about how people could double their money so quickly.
There is a good book about Konrad Kujau who forged heaps of stuff before faking Hitler diaries and the getting caught. It’s worth a read.
A line that’s stuck with me (and is hopefully remembered correctly) ‘there are efficient documents and inefficient documents.’
I'm pretty sure eBay's neutral ratings never impact the positive feedback rate regardless of how many you get.
We calculated this positive feedback percentage using the total number of positive and negative ratings...
Positive feedback: 189647
Negative feedback: 9...
189647 / ( 189647 + 9 ) = 100%https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPC3mLNL3B0
It seems like all the people bought his book ended up just creating fraud enterprises and it just probably expanded from there.
So I bought one.
About a week and a half passes, and no update on ebay regarding the shipping. I've had this happen once or twice before and the thing just eventually shows up, so I'm not too worried, but I am approaching the point of being worried.
Around that time, the seller sends me a message that their... warehouse burned down. So I should cancel the order because they can't fulfill it.
WTF.
I am like 95% sure this was some kind of scam or hustle from the beginning, but I haven't been able to figure out how. I got my money back. What gives? Maybe... some kind of drop-shipping thing that fell through, or they got a line on some counterfeits or "fell off a truck" stock but with limited info on what was actually in the batch, and weren't able to fulfill all the orders they took? I remain puzzled.
There are flats and there are books. Flats are a sheet of 20 Forever stamps that you would get at a drug store. A book is 20 stamps, used or not used.
Generally there are different values associated with flats because you can get cash for them on the streets. You can get them to the streets via an officer if you're ballsy. Or you can just find discreet ways to mail them.
The value of a flat where I was at was about $13-$14 depending on your vendor. A book was generally worth $10. If you were buying bulk (and depending on who exactly you were buying from), that number could go down to $12 and $7 respectively.
If you were buying from someone that was running a ticket (sports gambling) they had more incentive to get rid of their stamps. Some people had tens of thousands of dollars of stamps in their property and they wanted to convert them.
If you were buying from someone running a store (think "buy and resell commissary"), their business model was dependent on flipping books of stamps in exchange for more commissary. They could sell a ramen for 3 stamps ($1.50) when it was worth just 50 cents.
Flats were easier to hide because they are, well, flat.
I have a friend who did some time a decade or so ago (I'm uncertain if it was a federal or state prison) and one thing I've noted about him is how much he values books, even stuff like manuals and outdated reference material (we're in a volunteer group and we were cleaning up a room with a bunch of trash). His explanation to me was that in prison there wasn't much to do and so he spent his time reading as much stuff as he could get his hands on.
From your experience, would you say that the average rate of reading amongst inmates is higher than the general population? In person I've hardly met anyone who reads books other than for school assignments.
I know a ton of people in person who read a lot for pleasure, but I'm sure it's kind of self selecting. Are you in college? College was the time in my life I read the least.
Also, while I haven't been to prison, I've been to jail for a short cannabis related stay in the early 2010s. There is just so much less to do there that I ended up reading a whole book (2-300p) every day I was there. Many others had a book, but I'm not sure they were actually reading them. A lot of people in there were reading the Bible or some religious literature. Anyway, just my anecdote.
Nah, I'm in my 20s but already graduated. That said, most of my friends are guys from a church group and are 40+. I take back what I said a bit though. I know two of them who like to read spiritual stuff, but the rest don't read books and do social media or TikTok only.
One piece of trivia that's stuck with me is that stamps were used as a substitute for coins when the latter were in short supply during the Civil War because of metal-hoarding. A 1-cent stamp was basically a paper penny, backed by the value of just being able to stick it on a letter.
It makes sense with forever stamps, because inflation doesn't hurt their value. If everyone used stamps instead of dollars, the government wouldn't be able to just print money to fund things. It's what the dollar should be (and was, before we went off the gold standard).
There was plenty of volatility and inflation during those periods as well. The 16th century saw massive inflation in Europe, and the colonization and destruction of imperial China was driven by currency imbalances in trade.
Inflation doesn't hurt their value, but the government can make the cost of postage lower at any time. This would be expensive and they would likely lose a lot of money, but it would still be a lot cheaper than quantitative easing.
> If everyone used stamps instead of dollars, the government wouldn't be able to just print money to fund things.
I realize that this isn't what you meant, but the government can literally just print more stamps whenever they want. In fact, stamps and dollars are both printed by the same company in Canada [0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Bank_Note_Company
Edit: just checked your profile and found your blog. Excited to read it! I think I've actually stumbled across your story before now that I see the website. Again thanks for sharing!
* Which is also probably the last time I was in an actual Post Office.
I tend to just use one of the many late night shops doubling as a post office these days in the rare case I need to send something. Thankfully, the amount of paper arriving in my mailbox has been declining steadily. It's next to nothing at this point. Dedicated post offices are very rare now. But there are many of these late night shops doing post and packages on the side. They take your envelope, they print a label with some kind of scanable code, slap it on there, and take care of delivery.
The codes are basically short hashes that correspond to a database record confirming the correct amount was paid. Very hard to forge those.
No need to handle stamps anymore. Only for international postage.
Or so the story goes.
Later became a currency counterfeiter.
Go figure.
I hear that normally what the FBI would try in such cases is to lure people onto US or extraditable territory. IIRC there were some rogue Chinese chemists, who owned companies that sold fentanyl intermediates and were under secret indictment in the US, who were "invited to a VIP academic conference in Hawaii" and then arrested as soon as their flight landed.
Seems clear that this Pakistani is a bit more circumspect.
I don't know Pakistan's polices, but I would expect they would turn the criminal over to the US.
Unless you or your "crime" is covered by an existing shield law you could end up in a lot of trouble. Even if the shield law protects you, if you ever enter the state you could be thrown in prison or executed
This expectation seems...poorly calibrated.
Pakistan didn't arrest Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind an attack that killed thousands of innocent people and significantly altered the trajectory of world history. In what universe do you think they would deport a humble counterfeiter of stamps?
...which was located less than a mile (1300m for the non-Americans) from Pakistani West Point[1]. That points to either mind-boggling incompetence or a deep and well-hidden conspiracy.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden%27s_compound_i...
Motivated people can accomplish things.
Most of that isn't a national security priority. If Ted Kaczynski had been found hiding in DC or near West Point, instead of his cabin in the woods in Montana, they'd only be wrapping up the Congressional hearings by about now.
Why? I don't think military schools have a habit of invading nearby mansions and not much less was going to find him.
I suspect that the postage is actually generic and can be reused, but for obvious reasons don't want to try.
You can also take postage paid envelopes and stick them on anything. People used to stick them to bricks back in the day just for fun.
There's no verification built into a USPS label?
Yes there is verification. Sometimes the label WAS valid but it was purchased with stolen credit card OR purchased then refunded after delivery to the client but before it entered the postal stream.
EDIT: Remember, boxes can be dropped off before someone processes them. Just hand them random postal carrier OR put them in postal pickup box.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/nullship-selling-counterfe...
Here's the trajectory. Note that the final status has updated to no longer say "counterfeit" it's now just "postage assessment".
----- Delayed for postage assessment, Item in transit to destination
August 13, 2026 5:44 AM
Departed USPS Facility
JERSEY CITY NJ DISTRIBUTION CENTER
August 11, 2026 2:08 PM
Delayed for postage assessment, held awaiting payment
August 10, 2026 9:21 PM
Arrived at USPS Facility
JERSEY CITY NJ DISTRIBUTION CENTER
August 10, 2026 4:53 PM
In Transit to Next Facility
August 10, 2026 6:24 AM
In Transit to Next Facility
August 9, 2026 7:13 PM
Departed USPS Facility
MYTOWN DISTRIBUTION CENTER
August 9, 2026 8:18 AM
Arrived at USPS Facility
MYTOWN DISTRIBUTION CENTER
August 9, 2026 1:28 AM
Departed USPS Facility
MYTOWN DISTRIBUTION CENTER
August 8, 2026 10:30 AM
Delayed for postage assessment, held awaiting payment
August 7, 2026 6:29 PM
In Transit to Next Facility
August 7, 2026 9:14 AM
Arrived at USPS Facility
MYTOWN DISTRIBUTION CENTER
August 7, 2026 7:17 AM
In Transit to Next Facility
August 6, 2026 7:04 AM
In Transit to Next Facility
August 5, 2026 5:53 PM
Departed USPS Facility
OPA LOCKA FL DISTRIBUTION CENTER
August 5, 2026 4:46 AM
Arrived at USPS Facility
OPA LOCKA FL DISTRIBUTION CENTER
August 4, 2026 2:33 PM
My suspicion is that these labels are entering the mailstream somehow circumventing the "first" scan.
Really forged labels, reusing old tracking numbers and that kind of things... Hijacking Mailer IDs and/or USPS API keys... And of course, hijacking accounts of USPS resellers. An e-commerce/retailer/whatever that uses an USPS reseller API for getting all kind of labels get hacked, and its API keys are used for generating a hundred thousand labels to be resold in eBay.
I would love to know how this worked. Is there a hacked credential somewhere allowing for legit, but otherwise unpaid labels? Are they stolen CCs? Something else?
If that were the case the charges would be fraud and the victims would be the companies that paid for the postage. The charge of counterfeiting is pretty specific - if I steal a $100 bill from you and spend it I don’t get charged with using counterfeit money, I get charged with theft.
Business that ship a lot (which is probably most packages) don't go to the post office for each shipment. Instead they buy machines/printers/software/labels which allows them to print off the correct label, and also combines all the money into something they handle the money in one larger transaction. There are lots of options in the above for different needs, if you a shipping a package even once a week you should look into them - often you get a discount for something that is easy for you to do (sorting outgoing mail by zip code saves them a lot of money and so they will pass that on to you)
Because there are so many options you can find one option and duplicate it easily enough and it will take them a while to catch it.
You ship something from, say, Pakistan. You pay them the postage, they put a label on your parcel, send it to the U.S.
The USPS receive it, label it, deliver it, and note that the original collecting agency was overseas.
Periodically, usually based on the inbound volume, they settle the net value with the other international postal union member.
So - you ship from somewhere porous, with poor systems, it gets delivered, originating agency says “not ours, not paying”, and the USPS is left holding the bill.
i would love more insight into how they come up with the number of charges. why five counts of making/selling counterfeit postage stamp labels instead of 1 charge that covers all 5 million, or 5 million charges, etc.
i know they like to throw more at the start for a better plea negotiation position, but 5 just seemed rather random here.
The primary aim is to put the defendant in as large a hole as possible, with the minimum of work at the start, such that the case can be disposed of via a plea deal.
I wonder how many were returned to sender.
You can purchase a label from a reseller and then ship using that label to a different place at a different weight several times. Battled with this at a previous job.
I've had one of my UPS account numbers used to purchase some labels for someone else (I have no idea who). No way to report this to UPS since I can no longer get in touch with my account rep (who was great, until he disappeared).
Wow! How did these pass through the USPS system so easily?
These numbers are rough but there you go. Your intuition is correct. Roughly 100X.
One reason why, is that no civil person would consider it ( hence a lot of the pushback ). It's a prime target!