If you’re an online seller and you try to shave a couple bucks off shipping by cheating the system just a little, or if you are happy to mark international orders as “gifts” on the Customs Forms, you could be facing some serious jail time, as the USA Government is cracking down on mail fraud.

On November 15, 2021 the Department of Justice issued a press release regarding the prosecution and incarceration of an eBay seller who was cheating on postage. Here’s the highlights from the press release:

- Bradley Matheny from Iowa was sentenced to prison on March 2, 2021 after a verdict finding him guilty of seven counts of postage meter stamp forgery and counterfeiting and three counts of export violations.

- Matheny operated an eBay business known as “Mathenys” from his residence in Marion.

- Matheny used the United States Postal Service (USPS) to ship these goods to his customers.

- In a single year, 2015, he shipped over 28,000 packages with the USPS!

- Matheny possessed and used forged and counterfeited postage meter stamps on many of the packages he sent to his customers between 2013 and 2017.

HOW HE GOT BUSTED

USPS eventually alerted federal law enforcement, specifically the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), that Matheny might be falsifying postage in connection with his eBay business. I'm always surprised when I chat with fellow sellers who think cheating the mail system is ok as long as you do it just a little tiny bit because, unlike FedEx or UPS, USPS is actually the Federal Government!  

You may see FALSE, "fake news" stories that bogusly claim that the United States Postal service is not Federal and was privatized 30+ years ago.  This is simply NOT TRUE.  In fact, USPS is listed on USA.gov and in 2004 the United States Supreme Court stated that USPS is an “independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States”... YES PEOPLE, IT IS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT... and that means if you jerk around with it you are getting hit with one or more felonies!  It's so much better to just play the game honestly and you'll never have to deal with this  :)