Police arrested three men accused of selling thousands of pills of meth-laced “Adderall” on various darknet marketplaces and mailing them through the United States Postal Service through a fictitious business called “Professional Paper Filing Inc.” that listed a real return address of an uninvolved business. That business then told police that it was repeatedly getting packages of pills in the mail as “return to sender.”
The men face a maximum possible penalty of life imprisonment.
That’s why you use a fake return address that doesn’t exist. Allowing your product to get into real people’s hands was just asking for trouble.
Wrong, fake addresses get picked up and flagged quickly. Valid addresses are required to keep the operation moving. One dark net dealer used the addresses of sex offenders as the addresses are publicly listed, and he didn’t care if they got caught with drugs.
Dexter thinking right here.
I’m not defending sex offenders but some of the things that get you lumped into that group are definitely not equal to others. Getting caught pissing in a bush, for instance, not exactly what we think of.
Surely the USPS would then just open the package, to try and identify who the sender was instead?
I don’t believe USPS can open packages without a warrant (which is why they’re the preferred courier for drugs), and I don’t think “multiple packages going to a wrong address” counts as probable cause. But it’s been a minute since I’ve been involved in that end of things, so I dunno if that’s still current protocol.
https://www.uspis.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/USPIS-FAQs.pdf
Per #4 they need a warrant to open first class mail only. All other mail they can open without a warrant.
If it’s first class and they think the contents violate federal law then they can get a warrant. I doubt many legitimate pharmacies etc. ship pills via first class, and certainly not with a bogus return address. If they saw a pattern of that I would expect a warrant wouldn’t be too difficult to get.