If a persons real name and address were used to receive a letter from this busted vendor then the advice is that shipping to your home is no longer safe correct? In this case would the recommendation be to open a PO box? If so then is it safe to open one with your own name in the same city? Would the flag be at the local post office or at the sorting facitlity which in my case would be in a different city from where I live?
"the advice is that shipping to your home is no longer safe correct"
If his fake return addresses are known by LE (somewhat likely), then you will be known to LE. Remember that USPS takes photographs of every single piece of mail that goes through the system, which are then digitized into a searchable database.
This could also be one of those asshole vendors that writes down all the buyer information as plaintext in a notebook or excel file.