If he had used e.g. the USPS mail service, would it then have been mail fraud instead? Similar sentencing?

Yes. Also, you do not want the Postal Inspectors showing up looking for you. Like, for real.

Yep, 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.

That 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.

The 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-regulat...

Boy, that's a level of "sysadmin read too many BOFH stories and also thinks being 5'11" & bearded is a superpower" bombast I thought died out years ago.

Bombastics never die! They simply fade away...

Quite a bit more boring, but a co-worker once paid a contractor to install some blinds in his house, for a few thousand dollars. Dude took a down payment and then never delivered/installed the product, wouldn’t return their calls, etc.

My coworker went to the local police, who wouldn’t do anything, but then his lawyer advised him to go to the postal inspector (he had mailed the check to the contractor.)

The contractor ended up getting five years in federal prison for mail fraud.

The US justice system seems very odd to this European. Then I realize that if the EU project ever were to reach its presumed goals (by some), we'd probably end up with something pretty similar in terms of "oddness complexity".

I'd say you're already there.

In terms of law enforcement: I disagree. It's like 97% national still.

In terms of civil disputes between citizens from different member countries - well, we don't have any phone/internet/post police.

But you have the European arrest warrant now, right? So it may all be national, but also kinda international.

Oh, it is absolutely wild, which I don't think is a very good characteristic for a legal system, especially one where the rule is that 'ignorance of the law is not a defense'.

I think we need a new take on that phrase, something like "ignorance of the law must not be a reasonable defence" — when the law is too complex for most people to understand, it is vulnerable to capricious enforcement, malicious compliance, and unwitting everyday violations being held against the politically undesirable.

Not only do I have absolutely no idea how to get from here to there, I also assume the degree of simplification I desire — to the point that normal people know what's going on most of the time — is the legal equivalent of saying "Twitter doesn't need 6000 employees because Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facebook by himself in college" in a software engineering context, and wrong for much the same reasons.

I think we could start by requiring mens rea for any felony offense.

One of my favorite saying is this: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" (thousands years old saying and nothing has changed).

And, oh boy, do we have many laws.

It is by design, to oppress the people.

At work do you also say the legacy projects that are a pain to work with are by design, to oppress the programmers?

You don't even need to consider ALL laws. Just look at the tax code in isolation for good examples.

I often think it’s because Europe doesn’t typically have federalism.

I’m sure to anyone in the UK these ancient oddities seem pretty familiar.

It is directly based on the UK's legal system. I am sure the same oddities are present there as well. Probably moreso since they are an old country.

> The US justice system seems very odd to this European.

I very much agree. And I live in the US.

Or... do?

77k fine for a net worth of $10-14 million from his businesses, and a 5 years sentence at a minimum security prison (with the likelihood of parole much earlier) is not a bad retirement plan.

There is no parole in the Federal prison system.

Story time? What makes Postal Inspectors so feared.

I don’t but I was surprised to learn they have guns.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspect...

In America, its surprising to find out someone does NOT have a gun.

I mean, if we're going there, there is this 30 Rock scene:

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.

It's B99 not 30 Rock

They 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.

I 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.

Some 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.

Still 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.

We 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.

Who, Donald Rumsfeld?

This makes a lot of sense to me.

It's a psychological thing as far as I have been told. As in, the smaller the "amount" or "area" of power you give someone to enforce / defend the fiercer they will do so.

I saw this live once. A tiny office building's front entrance security guard. Had a sign in/out list for visitors. He was o the stereotypical leaned back in his chair, far away from the heightened desk type guy. Our visitor wanted to sign out. He knew the procedure from other days. The list sat behind the counter but in plain view. Our guest thought nothing of it so as he mentioned he'd leave and just sign out he grabbed the list from behind the counter. You should have seen how fast the security guy got up from his chair and started shouting at the guy what the... he was thinking just grabbing that list! He pulled the list back out of our visitors hands and then we heard a littany of other stuff. Until he finally let him actually sign out

I guess one can make use of this in some cases :)

I think that every Department of the US Government (and AFAIK most if not all of the independent agencies) has at least one armed law enforcement agency, though in many cases all it does is ensure the security of the department's buildings and protect against corruption by its employees.

Notably, 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.

For 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/cov...

Or it doesn't move unless it's nearly certain of its case.

Or the law is so wide-ranging that basically anyone is guilty of something.

I 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.

In 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)?

Don't they stamp "postage due" on it if you're short postage?

They 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.

That'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!?

That'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.

>to get 20 years they'd have to commit a massive fraud . . . with some other mitigating circumstances.

You mean aggravating circumstances.

just knowing that my neighbor was sending his mail this way would aggravate me!

Federal sentencing rules are very complex and take into account both the severity of the crime (as determined by its "offense level," of which there are 43) and the defendant's criminal history. I don't know the offense level of the particular crime mentioned in the comment, but presumably it would be fairly low, and since the defendant would have been a minor with (presumably) no federal criminal history, it's very unlikely IMO that they would have seen anywhere near that long if they were convicted. My guess is fines, probation, maybe a few months at worst, but judging by the tone of the comment, it seems like basically nothing happened and this was just a "scared straight" scenario.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Federal_Sentenci...

I was part of a conspiracy to commit massive credit card fraud as a minor (thankfully all no longer relevant). I was given AT&T calling card numbers which were pilfered right from the USPS to use to connect to US BBSes to download hacked software.

The Belgian guy I was in with got raided by the police. His hard disks had been hidden behind a brick wall with only the cables visible. They didn't find the hard disks so he got away with it, and I never got arrested or charged.

Good times.

I tried this a few times as a little kid to see if it would work. If I sent it from my home, it didn't work and I got it returned with red pen notes on it explaining how to send it properly. I am sure it looked like a little kids writing, so they gave me the benefit of the doubt. Next I mailed it from the post office and that actually worked, as long as it was being sent locally.

You 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...

This 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.

I 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.

I 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.

Interstate commerce? Just spitballing...

Sounds like I need to target wire fraud as well, with drug cultivation/sales, firearm manufacture/sale/possession (even by a felon), and tax evasion to my list of charges to jury nullify on...

So you're in favor of letting people (usually rich people) commit wire fraud?

When it's a victimless crime like this?

It's hardly victimless-- when you lie to get something of value that would otherwise go to other people, and then sell it, you're ripping those people off.

No one lost anything here. No one is worse off than had this not happened.

At worst rent seekers didn’t get to collect rent for something that cost them nothing. An imaginary commodity, a literal number.

> No one lost anything here. At worst rent seekers didn’t get to collect rent for something that cost them nothing.

This was your original comment.

The opposite is true here: a person received addresses at low costs reserved for people who don't have any addressing of their own, and then sold the addresses for millions of dollars to companies who already have a lot of addresses and would be ineligible for this.

They pretended to be dozens of new companies to do this. They filed false affidavits where they swore facts that were untrue.

Meanwhile companies actually eligible for ARIN's initial block policy had to wait indefinitely because this scalper had snatched up all the inventory. Were they not harmed?

(Not a lawyer)

Fraud basically means lying to someone to steal from them. Wire fraud means doing that using electronic communications.

Of course there can be bogus charges and you should vote to acquit on those, but wire fraud seems squarely in the set of things that should be illegal if we have laws at all.

It's often easier to prove this (or, even more often, tax evasion) than prove the alleged criminal activity. Either way, bad guy goes to jail, so the government is happy.

Would like to see Amazon charged with wire fraud for all the counterfeit stuff they sell. It's paid for "by wire" is it not? And almost certainly across state lines which makes it federal.

Fraud is the wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.

While counterfeit stuff are sold by vendors in the marketplace that Amazon provides, that is not equivalent to Amazon being the one selling the stuff.

In what imaginary world is accepting payment and shipping the item not the same as selling the item?

The difference between being an Amazon Vendor and a Seller: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/01/2...

Right, but there are plenty of counterfeit items shipped by Amazon. Just search for 1TB USB stick. Whatever internal distinctions they make don't matter to the reality that they are accepting payment and shipping the items.

Substance over form.

The vendor that appears on my Credit Card statement is Amazon. The organisation who sets the commercial terms is Amazon. The website is completely Amazon branded. The goods are usually stored in a big warehouse with "Amazon" written on the side and delivered by someone engaged and paid by Amazon. The box that arrives has "Amazon Prime" written all over it.

I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, Amazon is selling the item.

A former Nascar driver, Jeremy Mayfield, was charged with felonies for (supposedly) unknowingly selling stolen goods through his scrap yard.

Then why is eBay in court for allowing emissions defeat devices to be sold on its platform, eBay didn't sell them?

1. Amazon ships plenty of counterfeit merchandise.

2. There is so much counterfeit stuff on Amazon that they should know about it, and should be held responsible since they do nothing about it. "Should have known" is sufficient for guilt in a court of law, when the thing is blatantly obvious.

silk road

Governments love overbroad laws that can be selectively enforced.

I wonder if it's ancient communications methods fraud if you do it by carrier pigeon...

Unless you do it over wifi, then it's technically wireless fraud.