Genuine stamps would have a total value of more than $118,000, customs officials said.
Nearly 162,000 counterfeit U.S. Forever Stamps originating from China were recently seized at a mail facility near the Chicago O’Hare International Airport, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said on Feb. 13.
Anti-Terrorism Contraband Enforcement officers at the Chicago International Mail Branch intercepted eight shipments containing 161,860 fraudulent stamps during the weekend of Feb. 8 and Feb. 9.
The federal agency stated that the seized stamps violated U.S. trademark laws and estimated that their value would have exceeded $118,000 if they were genuine.
CBP officials said they were able to determine that the stamps were fake due to their poor quality and “based on the very low invoice value, the routing, and the extraordinary efforts undertaken to conceal the stamps.”
“Counterfeiters only care about making a profit. They don’t care about the effect that fake postage has on your ability to send important mail and overall impacts the U.S. economy,” LaFonda D. Sutton-Burke, director of CBP’s Field Operations-Chicago, said in a statement. “Our officers and specialists are some of the most highly trained in the nation, and their level of expertise is evident with these seizures. CBP officers were able to identify these very realistic counterfeits and stop them from reaching their destinations.”
The federal agency warned that counterfeit stamps have improved to the point that most consumers may not be able to distinguish them from authentic ones, which are produced by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
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CBP has observed an uptick in fake stamps, particularly around high-volume card holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, the agency said.
In another recent case, CBP officers seized 4,080 fake U.S. postage stamps in 12 shipments from China at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in March 2023. The federal agency noted at the time that there had been a stark rise in the number of vendors selling fake stamps on e-commerce and social media platforms.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) stated in its fiscal year 2023 report that its investigators were working to shut down websites selling fake postage stamps. They also partnered with some e-commerce marketplaces to remove merchants selling fake stamps from their platforms.
In one case during fiscal year 2022, the USPIS seized nearly $2.5 million in fake stamps coming from China, according to an annual report.
The surge in the use of counterfeit stamps prompted the USPIS and the USPS to issue warnings in 2023.
“The intentional use, or sale, of counterfeit postage is a crime because it seeks to obtain services without payment,” the USPS said in a statement at the time.
“Counterfeit stamps are often sold in bulk quantities at a significant discount–anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of their face value. That’s a tell-tale sign they’re bogus,” the USPIS said in a July 2023 statement.
