Silk Road forums

Discussion => Shipping => Topic started by: wiggum on March 30, 2013, 08:45 pm

Title: UPS settles with US government over illegal drug shipments
Post by: wiggum on March 30, 2013, 08:45 pm
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-29/ups-settles-probe-of-illegal-online-drug-shipments-u-s-says.html

United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) agreed to forfeit $40 million to settle a federal probe into shipments for illegal online pharmacies, admitting the company had information it was helping distribute controlled substances.

UPS signed a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. that requires it to set up a compliance program to prevent illegal Internet pharmacies from using its shipping services, according to a copy of the deal released today by the Justice Department. The accord, which requires cooperation with the Drug Enforcement Administration, will remain in effect for two years.

“DEA is aggressively targeting the diversion of controlled substances, as well as those who facilitate their unlawful distribution,” DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart said in a statement. “This investigation is significant and DEA applauds UPS for working to strengthen and enhance its practices in order to prevent future drug diversion.”

From 2003 through 2010, UPS knew from employees that Internet pharmacies were using its services to distribute controlled substances and medicines without valid prescriptions in violation of the law, according to the agreement. UPS didn’t implement procedures to close the shipping accounts of these pharmacies, the Justice Department said.

The company’s drivers went so far as to drop off drug packages with pharmacy customers in parking lots and along highways, according to a law enforcement letter attached to the agreement.
Probe Subpoenas

UPS said in a regulatory filing last year that it responded to subpoenas as far back as 2007 from the U.S. attorney in San Francisco in connection with the DEA investigation.

“UPS cooperated with the DOJ throughout the investigation,” Bill Tanner, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based company, said in a statement. “We believe we have an obligation and responsibility to help curb the sale and shipment of drugs sold through illegal Internet pharmacies.”

FedEx Corp. (FDX) disclosed that it’s facing a similar probe in documents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. FedEx, in a Sept. 19 filing, said it responded to grand jury subpoenas in 2008 and 2009.

“It’s unclear what federal laws UPS may have violated,” Patrick Fitzgerald, a spokesman for Memphis-based FedEx, said in a statement today. “We remain confident that we are in compliance with federal law.”
DEA List

He said the company has asked the DEA for a list of pharmacies it believes operate illegally “so we can immediately shut off shipping services.”

A statement of facts referred to in the agreement lays out the role UPS played in shipping packages for Internet pharmacies beginning in 1999. UPS admitted that the information in the statement is accurate, according to the agreement.

In 2003, UPS marketing employees identified Internet pharmacies as a sector of the health-care industry worth pursuing because of its high shipping volume and revenue potential. In an e-mail, they noted the importance of luring these customers away from other carriers.

In just a few months, UPS employees became concerned after clients were shut down by state and federal authorities. The company decided to no longer offer pricing discounts to Internet pharmacies that don’t require patients to first see a doctor. UPS still allowed the pharmacies to use its service.
‘Due Diligence’

“Appropriate due diligence was not conducted on all accounts UPS employees knew or should have known were being used to ship pharmaceuticals ordered online to determine whether the businesses were operating legally,” according to the statement of facts.

The document offers the example of United Care Pharmacy, which UPS signed up as a client in September 2005. That same month, the Kentucky Bureau of Investigations Drug Unit sent UPS a list of illegal pharmacies that were shipping drugs to its state that included United Care. UPS continued to ship packages from the pharmacy into Kentucky, according to the statement of facts.

UPS cut the pharmacy from its client list only after senior executives of the pharmacy were arrested two years later, according to the document.

UPS also continued to ship Internet pharmacy orders into Virginia after receiving a letter in 2005 from state law enforcement officials claiming that UPS drivers were delivering drug packages to people in parking lots and beside the highway. Drivers were also delivering packages to the same person who was using several different names, according to an excerpt of the letter published in the statement of facts.

“We are concerned that these drugs, many of which are mind altering pain medication and nerve medication, are being misused, and abused by citizens,” the Southwest Drug Task Force in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, said in the letter.
Title: Re: UPS settles with US government over illegal drug shipments
Post by: jentyb on March 31, 2013, 02:16 am
wow  :o
Title: Re: UPS settles with US government over illegal drug shipments
Post by: lelmeriodici on March 31, 2013, 04:31 am
Quote
The company’s drivers went so far as to drop off drug packages with pharmacy customers in parking lots and along highways, according to a law enforcement letter attached to the agreement.

That's something else.

I've always wished more vendors on SR would ship via UPS, for a couple reasons...

1.  The workers all get paid less than USPS people
2.  A lot of them don't give a fuck (as evidenced in the above article), it's just more business for them (them being a legit company that has shareholders to make happy)
3.  They're in no way government employees who are constantly reminded of law enforcement rules and regulations
4.  It's easier to ship anonymously (in many cases)
5.  Everybody uses USPS, so it wouldn't be expected
6.  Better tracking
7.  Cheaper
8.  MUCH tougher to do a CD
9.  Getting a warrant to open a package or for a CD requires only "reasonable suspicion" in the US.  It's really much easier to get a warrant than most people here would think.  I think a lot of people have a false sense of security with this.

I digress... It's good to see UPS waited until they got caught to do something, they weren't actually reporting this stuff.

lelmeriodici
Title: Re: UPS settles with US government over illegal drug shipments
Post by: harharhar on March 31, 2013, 04:49 am
So they failed to close the vendor accounts.  I am assuming the vendor's are just going to request a package pickup at their address, or go to the UPS facility?
Title: Re: UPS settles with US government over illegal drug shipments
Post by: AllDayLong on March 31, 2013, 06:02 am
Haha probably
Title: Re: UPS settles with US government over illegal drug shipments
Post by: kmfkewm on March 31, 2013, 02:37 pm
Quote
The company’s drivers went so far as to drop off drug packages with pharmacy customers in parking lots and along highways, according to a law enforcement letter attached to the agreement.

That's something else.

I've always wished more vendors on SR would ship via UPS, for a couple reasons...

1.  The workers all get paid less than USPS people
2.  A lot of them don't give a fuck (as evidenced in the above article), it's just more business for them (them being a legit company that has shareholders to make happy)
3.  They're in no way government employees who are constantly reminded of law enforcement rules and regulations
4.  It's easier to ship anonymously (in many cases)
5.  Everybody uses USPS, so it wouldn't be expected
6.  Better tracking
7.  Cheaper
8.  MUCH tougher to do a CD
9.  Getting a warrant to open a package or for a CD requires only "reasonable suspicion" in the US.  It's really much easier to get a warrant than most people here would think.  I think a lot of people have a false sense of security with this.

I digress... It's good to see UPS waited until they got caught to do something, they weren't actually reporting this stuff.

lelmeriodici

UPS packages don't need warrants to open them, USPS packages need warrants to open them. USPS carries much more mail than UPS so far harder to screen all of it. USPS is the way to go , for these and various other reasons. Also it is definitely not MUCH harder  to do a CD with UPS than it is with USPS.
Title: Re: UPS settles with US government over illegal drug shipments
Post by: lelmeriodici on March 31, 2013, 05:22 pm
kmfkewm, I know that UPS packages can be opened by anyone, that's why I wrote point #9.  Also points number 1 and 2, and the OP's article.... they just don't give a fuck.  They want to make money whether it's shipping heroin or hats.

In 2012, USPS shipped 3.5 billion packages.  UPS shipped 4.1 billion.  Including flat, first-class letters and postcards, yes, USPS ships about forty times as many parcels (160 billion total volume in 2012), but you can't fit pills in a letter or powder in a postcard, and law enforcement knows that.

As far as CDs, you'll notice that someone different is coming to your door and you simply don't accept the package.  They also have to dress up their own person and may have to run their own truck, depending on how much UPS wants to cooperate.

The point is, most of the packages I have received (even ones that people praise for having great stealth) have had strange enough characteristics (like stamps on packages supposedly coming from a company that otherwise uses metered postage) that, if checked out, would be found to be fraudulent or deceptive, and THAT would be "reasonable suspicion," the burden of proof necessary to procure a warrant.  Even if there wasn't anything particularly strange, we all know that law enforcement doesn't always go by the book, and if they want they could "notice" that a package happened to get "caught"" in the machine and "accidentally" tore open and left coke all over the processing machine.  Then they go get a warrant and fuck you over.  Obviously if everyone on SR and around the world switches to UPS or FedEx we're fucked, but I wouldn't mind having the option for myself.

lelmeriodici
Title: Re: UPS settles with US government over illegal drug shipments
Post by: wiggum on March 31, 2013, 08:12 pm
Quote
The company’s drivers went so far as to drop off drug packages with pharmacy customers in parking lots and along highways, according to a law enforcement letter attached to the agreement.

That's something else.

I've always wished more vendors on SR would ship via UPS, for a couple reasons...

1.  The workers all get paid less than USPS people
2.  A lot of them don't give a fuck (as evidenced in the above article), it's just more business for them (them being a legit company that has shareholders to make happy)
3.  They're in no way government employees who are constantly reminded of law enforcement rules and regulations
4.  It's easier to ship anonymously (in many cases)
5.  Everybody uses USPS, so it wouldn't be expected
6.  Better tracking
7.  Cheaper
8.  MUCH tougher to do a CD
9.  Getting a warrant to open a package or for a CD requires only "reasonable suspicion" in the US.  It's really much easier to get a warrant than most people here would think.  I think a lot of people have a false sense of security with this.

I digress... It's good to see UPS waited until they got caught to do something, they weren't actually reporting this stuff.

lelmeriodici

Man, I couldn't disagree with you more.  First, US mail (at least mail addressed to a US citizen) can't be opened without a search warrant, and the search warrant can only be issued by a judge based on probable cause NOT reasonable suspicion.  Your mail can be DETAINED based on reasonable suspicion, but not opened without probable cause.  So, they could hold your mail and call a dog to sniff it, use a positive dog alert to go to a judge, who issues a warrant, and only then can the package to be opened. 

  "The Supreme Court has held that no Fourth Amendment privacy interest in first-class mail is invaded by detaining such mail based on facts that create reasonable suspicion until a search warrant can be obtained." United States v. Van Leeuwen, 397 U.S. 249, 252-53, 90 S.Ct. 1029, 1032-33, 25 L.Ed.2d 282 (1970). "Reasonable suspicion results from specific and articulable facts and rational inferences therefrom that reasonably justify an intrusion." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968);

So, yes, it is relatively easy for a USPS worker to temporarily "seize" or "detain" a package until a drug dog can be called in.  But the process of doing this is a huge pain in the ass.  First, a worker who finds a suspicious package has to report to his manager and fill out paper work.  The manager then has to report it to some other regional supervisor and do more paperwork.  After that, they have to arrange calling in a dog and getting a judge to issue a warrant.  Once they have a warrant, they have to document opening the package on video, and do more paperwork.  USPS workers are not going to seize every single "suspicious" package they see and call in a drug dog.  It would take weeks to process a single day's mail if they called in a dog to sniff every "drug-sized box" that comes through (after all, how suspicious can a drug shipment look, unless it reeks of weed or has drugs falling out the seams). 

Further, it is a serious federal crime to tamper with US mail without a search warrant.  The postal workers who tamper with mail without a warrant are fired (this is pretty much the only way a postal worker can be fired lol) and sometimes prosecuted.  Thus, their incentive is to err on the side of not fucking with people's packages.

Meanwhile, at UPS (and FedEx), they don't have to jump through dozens of hoops to open a package, and it's not a crime to open a package.  UPS workers don't have anywhere near the incentive to leave packages alone that USPS workers have.

UPS/FedEx workers aren't as well versed in federal mail tampering laws and search warrant requirements as USPS workers are because UPS/FedEx workers are not subject to them!!!