Purloined postage and privacy problems
Posted by Bruce E.H. Johnson
The Seattle Times, in Saturday's newspaper, reports an unusual privacy scam. In July 2007, a federal grand jury charges, three LA men left LA and went to Seattle to buy 3,200 books of postage stamps worth more than $24,000.
As the Times noted:
Following a pattern that Postal Service investigators have uncovered in at least five Western states, the men made mass purchases of stamps after normal working hours from automated postal machines, which are accessible 24 hours a day in the lobbies of many post offices around the country, prosecutors allege.
The illegal stamp-buying scheme appears to be a novel breed of identity theft, one that blends high-tech thievery, online commerce and the retro currency of the U.S. mail.
The scam was a convoluted one. Federal authorities charge that the three men obtained stolen credit- card numbers and then (using a credit card reader) embedded that information onto the magnetic strips of retailers' gift cards, transforming them into credit cards. According to government officials, they took the cards to eleven different post offices in the Seattle area, obtained the 3,200 books of stamps, which the suspects then mailed to colleagues in California who apparently sold them on eBay.
According to the news article, in the Puget Sound area alone, the Postal Service has lost $62,000 this year to this particular scam.
