Double kill! More than 360,000 orders for missing water were "caught in one pot"

Just one week has passed and here we go again ...

Another 200,000 water-traffic slips were seized

On February 21, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued another announcement eight days later , saying that it had seized another batch of missing shipments.

Specifically, according to the announcement, CBP seized a large number of counterfeit U.S. Forever stamps during a surprise inspection at the Port of Birmingham . The number reached 200,000, with a value of US$146,000 (approximately RMB 1.06 million), and all of them came from Hong Kong, China .

During routine work at a local sorting facility , CBP officers selected two packages for inspection based on specific criteria. Upon inspection, they found a number of missing manifests in the packages , violating multiple intellectual property rights (IPR) laws.

It has only been eight days since 160,000 missing shipment bills were seized last time , and in the last large-scale seizure, the makers of the missing shipment bills were also from China.

CBP said that while counterfeiting, including fake manifests, is a global problem, China and Hong Kong accounted for approximately 90% of CBP’s total intellectual property seizures in FY24 .

Some sellers are wondering about the two incidents of large-scale misdirected orders in one week. Is it because the tariff policy has been fluctuating, so they are making preparations in advance?

According to feedback from industry insiders, the price of a counterfeit waybill is as low as 10% of the original one, which greatly tempts some sellers who are suffering from cost. They will look for such low-priced waybills on the Internet and make a bold gamble. If they "win", their costs will be greatly reduced, but if they lose, they will have to bear the loss of goods, logistics costs, etc.

The crackdown on online transactions has not only begun this year, and the United States is not the only country that is cracking down on it.

In 2017, CBP discovered thousands of counterfeit United States Postal Service ( USPS) stamps while inspecting packages at the Port of Los Angeles .

In 2020 , PostNL , in cooperation with customs, seized tens of thousands of counterfeit Dutch and EU stamps at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

In 2021 , British police seized a warehouse in Birmingham and found a large number of counterfeit Royal Mail stamps.

In 2022 , German customs seized more than 50,000 counterfeit Deutsche Post stamps at Frankfurt Airport .

In 2023 , Australia Post intercepted several batches of counterfeit stamps in Sydney and Melbourne .

The counterfeit stamps, also known as fake stamps, seized in these operations all originated from China, and most of them were sold to cross-border sellers through channels such as social media, independent websites, and e-commerce platforms for use in cross-border small package mailing.

"God operation"? The operation of entering the police station

There is no doubt that the existence of water-running shipping documents is bound to affect the operations and performance of logistics companies.

In a 2021 report by the US media , it was mentioned that the USPS lost millions of dollars in revenue every year due to the sale of parcel postage. I wonder if you still remember the incident in 2023 in which a Chinese woman faced criminal punishment for selling parcel postage.

In 2023, a 50-year-old Chinese woman was arrested in Los Angeles. The investigation showed that she ran a logistics company that provided USPS discounted rates to local e-commerce sellers in the United States and overseas Chinese . However , inspections by USPS and USPIS staff showed that most of her shipping bills were shipping bills.

In this regard, after preliminary investigation, the woman was accused of using the waybill to send more than 9 million packages in half a year , causing USPS to lose more than 60 million US dollars. After further investigation, it was found that the suspect actually used the waybill to send more than 34 million packages, and the USPS lost more than 150 million US dollars .

From the perspective of logistics companies, the losses are not small; from the perspective of sellers, those engaged in such black and gray industries as shipping bills may eventually face severe penalties.

In the above cases, the U.S. Attorney's Office said the defendants may face up to 10 years in prison.

And even earlier, many people who intended to take chances had their lives tarnished because of this.

In 2021, a pair of Pakistani brothers were accused of forging $3 million worth of smuggling documents while using student visas. During a raid on the scene, dozens of boxes of smuggling documents worth more than $100,000 were found in the brothers' home.

As early as 2020, Australia Post discovered that a batch of counterfeit invoices had appeared on e-commerce platforms such as eBay, so it worked with relevant departments to conduct a search. Afterwards, the people involved faced five charges respectively, including possession, sale and distribution of counterfeit invoices, and handling of these illegal proceeds.

In 2022, the Tokyo police in Japan announced that a Tokyo man was arrested again for allegedly purchasing thousands of fake stamps from China. It is reported that the man conspired with a gang that made fake stamps in China to import 34,400 140 yen stamps and 8,100 100 yen stamps into Japan between December 2018 and October 2019 .

In the year ending December 2019, the man illegally imported about 200,000 slips worth about 1 million yen.

According to them, 100 shipping orders only cost 500 yen (32 yuan based on the exchange rate on the last day of 2019).

Saving $700,000 a year ? Not feasible

In recent years, the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce has nurtured a large number of sellers and an industry, and has also spawned this black and gray industry. Jay Bigalke, editor-in-chief of Linn's Stamp News in the United States, once said that the number of cross-border e-commerce orders in the United States has grown exponentially in 2021 .

USPS has also stated that the number of high-quality shipping documents from overseas has continued to increase in the past few years. CBP also mentioned that the quality of shipping documents has been getting higher and higher in recent years, and is getting closer and closer to the authentic ones.

There are many advertisements for low-cost cross-border logistics on Chinese social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu. Some practitioners even take orders quite openly, saying, " I'll cover the entire order for $3 for a water order , no other fees, and we can negotiate if the quantity is sufficient ."

There are also those who advocate that the profit margin of shoddy orders is huge, "The volume of shoddy orders is astonishing. Two sellers here receive 15,000 orders a day, and we have been cooperating for a long time. Other channels are unstable and come to me for cooperation. Although it is true that regular orders are long-term, the price difference with shoddy orders is too big. The shipping fee for regular orders does not include the overseas warehouse operation fee. The difference is 1 US dollar per order. If there are 10,000 orders a day, the difference is 70,000 yuan . How much money is lost in a month? The remaining money is astonishing ."

A seller who has already withdrawn from the cross-border circle mentioned that in the early years, by running cross-border orders, he could save $700,000 in costs in less than a year .

Just recently, a special investigation by foreign media also mentioned that several users on Xiaohongshu were secretly selling U.S. Postal Service mail orders, with the unit price ranging from 60 cents to 80 cents per piece , which is more than 80% lower than the regular postage cost .

Based on the above chaos, international logistics companies are also constantly improving anti-counterfeiting technologies, and searches by relevant departments have become more frequent and compliance requirements have become more detailed.

For example, DHL and FedEx have strengthened the verification technology for postage labels, especially on the China-US and China-Europe routes, and have intercepted a large number of missing postage labels through AI scanning systems .

The relevant departments in the United States have also issued new regulations, allowing USPS to regard packages with shipping notices as " abandoned items . "

When will the chaos of water leakage end? Let's take one step at a time.

Water running

Shipping order

Under investigation