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Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

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Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#161

Post by boomboomsubban »

Joker_vD wrote: post #156
boomboomsubban wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They hire someone to take each batch from them. So at best, you can only ever prosecute a fall guy, not the skilled counterfeiter. In essence, it's easier to make any counterfeiting illegal, and then not prosecute the person who once prints a picture of a stamp and tapes it to a letter. Trying to make counterfeiting legal in certain situations can be abusable.

And so they get prosecuted for incitement, conspiracy and organized crime. Seriously, as a rule of thumb, none of those extremely simple loopholes you can come up in five seconds of thinking work: there people were before you, and they too could think (even though in case of lawmakers it can sometimes be hard to imagine that they can actually think).

If selling 99 stamps is legal, I'm not inciting them to crime, I'm selling them the maximum allowable amount that isn't a crime. Similar with conspiracy and organized crime.

And yeah, these loopholes don't work because people tried them and now counterfeiting one stamp is illegal. That's my point.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#162

Post by coldtea »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #149
Dylan16807 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did "at a time" come from?

As in "I counterfeit 99 stamps at a time then sell them. That esy I never break the law."

Yes, the parents question is meant as "where did the idea that doing 99 'at a time' would somehow bypass a law about >= 100 being illegal comes from?".

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#163

Post by robk »

IanCal wrote: post #150
scotty79 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It links to identity of whoever purchased them with credit card. Or whoever stood in front of the camera when transaction for these stamps was registered.

> It links to identity of whoever purchased them with credit card. How do you think this happens? The codes are not scanned at the shop. > when transaction for these stamps was registered. Where is this registered?

I'd bet money in a forensic scenario they could look up the batch and then estimate the sequence and thus date of sale and pull the post office cctv footage.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#164

Post by robk »

Theodores wrote: post #148

Several years ago I bought a box of small toy Easter chicks and sent them in lots of envelopes over a period of a few weeks to my mother, as if they were 'migrating', getting workmates to write the labels and send them so they would have different postmark towns. The idea was for them to be anonymous. Some had several chicks in the envelopes. They kept arriving at my mother's and provided much amusement, with all but…

Well after the first time you just ignore the post cards wouldn't you? Easy way to handle returns too for sellers who can't cancel an order.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#165

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

dhosek wrote: post #80

What caught my attention was that the first-class mail rate in the UK is £1.35 which is about $1.70 at current exchange rates. In contrast, in the US a first-class stamp is $0.68 (I buy forever stamps in bulk so I was surprised to discover it had gotten that high). The USPS really is a bargain.

Especially considering the average distance between two addresses is several times longer.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#166

Post by dhosek »

michaelt wrote: post #135
dhosek wrote: post #80

What caught my attention was that the first-class mail rate in the UK is £1.35 which is about $1.70 at current exchange rates. In contrast, in the US a first-class stamp is $0.68 (I buy forever stamps in bulk so I was surprised to discover it had gotten that high). The USPS really is a bargain.

Bear in mind the services are kinda different. In the UK, 93% of first class mail is delivered next day, including Saturdays, and you can often post things as late as 4pm. Whereas USPS first class mail is delivered in 1–5 business days. Admittedly, in a much larger country.

I think though, that the percentage of USPS first class mail delivered in 1 day (including Saturday) is probably pretty close to 93% since a significant fraction of mail will be within narrow regions (I would guess that the DC–Boston area itself accounts for at least half of first-class mail).

Back in the Netflix DVDs by mail days, it was rare that it took more than a day for the DVD to get to or from the Netflix warehouse (when they started shuttering warehouses in the last few years of service, that went up to two days each way for a DVD from Chicago to Columbus, Ohio).

I’d also point out that mailbox pickup in the U.S. varies by the mailbox, but many of the ones near me have late afternoon (3–4p) pickups and if I go to the mailbox by the local post office it’s 5.30p. I can even take it to the downtown Chicago post office for a 9p pickup.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#167

Post by tim333 »

graemep wrote: post #138
pxeger1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that’s not really true. It’s not like cash is deanonynising because of the serial numbers. You can still get stamps on a grey market or send someone else to get them for you, and I’m sure they’re sold in lots of places that don’t have CCTV. The postmark would always have identified the approximate source location, it’s just a bit more precise now.

You can keep your privacy, but most people will not bother. Most people will buy stamps with a card (or phone) payment so there is a complete chain of identify. The aim is mass surveillance so a few people going to the trouble of avoiding it is not a problem. True, it is meta data (not letter contents) but we know that is pretty powerful by itself. I do mean it is the aim - they never really explained what the real a…

Using cash to buy them is not hard and the odds of anyone going through the CCTV is low unless you are going to post anthrax to the PM or something. I imagine the main reason to do it was to make it harder to use fake stamps, although there may be some tracking going on.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#168

Post by snthd »

bscphil wrote: post #157
2-3-7-43-1807 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well ... it's the royal mail which happens to be identical to the royal mail from the post office scandal. that's about the reassurance you got to expect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

The article credits a docuseries I've never heard of for making this a widely known issue: > A four-part television drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, was broadcast on ITV in January 2024, after which the scandal became a major news story and political issue. I swear I read some long form journalism on this issue years ago. Anyone know what I might have found? For the Brits who have previously heard of this scandal,…

Computer Weekly, 11 May 2009, Bankruptcy, prosecution and disrupted livelihoods - Postmasters tell their story

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240089230/Bankruptcy-pr...

>A seventh postmaster, Alan Bates, refused to sign his weekly accounts, saying it would have made him liable for any losses. He has called for a public inquiry.

Re: Why are so many people being hit with £5 fines for 'counterfeit' stamps?

#170

Post by tim333 »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #91

I don’t know whether I should post this as it may be an ongoing case, but not so long ago I sent off my old stamps to the official “swap out” service to have them replaced by the new barcoded ones. A few days later, I did indeed receive equivalent new stamps back — in an envelope that had clearly been tampered with, being roughly cut open all down one side and having the paperwork accompanying the stamps obviously be…

It's surprisingly easy to get fake ones on ebay for any criminals out there wanting to do a swap. Here for example https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266403486260
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