I realize this won’t make someone rich, but as the price of postage continues to rise I wonder if anyone has been convicted recently of counterfeiting stamps? Okay, I found this one case, but it doesn’t seem to happen very often. I’m not looking for ways to do it, just wondering why you never really hear about it happening.
Maybe it’s harder than it looks, compared to counterfeiting currency.
Are their security features on stamps like there are on US currency?
Do they use special paper that can only be bought from one company?
Hi Opal!
Is there a special printing process that is difficult to duplicate?
There are two types of money counterfeiters. Nutcases who do it in their basement for a few bills to pass at stores and organized crime rings who put out bills in the millions. The latter mostly fence them on the street to specialists who move them overseas where American bills are a de facto second currency. But they wind up with only pennies per dollar for the bills. Either way, the time and effort demand that they go for the highest usable denomination. It takes the same time and effort to make a fake $100 as a fake $1.
Stamps haven’t yet hit 50 cents. You run the same risks and put in the same effort for half a percent of the return. That’s a non-starter.
But in addition stamps and bills are different worlds when it comes to use. Who is the audience for bills? Pretty much everybody. Even in a plastic economy most people would gladly buy $1000 in cash for $200 because they could use it. If somebody offered you $1000 in stamps for $200 would you take them? No, because you would never use them. At best you could make it a pyramid scheme where you sell them to somebody for $300. But you’d still have to find a new set of suckers.
People who use this many stamps often don’t use stamps at all. They use machines that print postage on a letter drawing on an account. PRE SORT STD tells me it’s junk mail. Maybe using fake first class stamps would keep me from throwing them out unread, but I don’t know how far that gets you. Charities have special stamps, and I suppose a scam charity could create NONPROFIT ORG. stamps. But those cost much less than first-class stamps to begin with so you’re taking risks with even less return.
So the potential ROI is extremely small and has been for decades. And yes, there are all sorts of security protections on stamps, like ultraviolet markings without which they get rejected by the automatic sorting machines.
Without a market, there’s no good reason to counterfeit stamps today. Stamps were far more omnipresent 50 or 75 years ago, but they only cost 3 cents. A few people have always tried to make this a niche but the market keeps saying that putting the crookedness into a $20 or $100 bill is a thousand times more sensible.
I remember Chicago artist Michael Thompson who makes fake stamps, and I thought a part of the art was actually using them to mail things. Which would seem to indicate that not every piece of mail is examined that closely.
IIRC the CBC program “Live It Up” about 25 years ago made their own stamps as a test; they were not even imitations, they were like the Easter Seals, their own design. they even had the show’s name on them. They sent them through the Candian post office, and if I recall 3/4 or more made it through. Some were flagged, and a viewer sent them a copy of a Canadian Post Office notice that someone was using fake stamps with the picture of their stamp.
In a discussion about this, someone said that newer stamps now have that flourescent white finish, so that the stamp was located and fully cancelled by the cancellation machine. Most stamps appear to be on extremely bright white paper. The post office declined to say what the counterfeit detection methods were.
Of course, with mainly postage meters and “prepaid” envelopes, odds are as mentioned above - why bother? Who mails any more anyway?
In my profession as a ceramic engineer I had the pleasure to work with a company that made fluorescent pigments. While discussing uses for their products it came to light that one of their biggest customers was the US Postal Service. Stamps contain fluorescent pigment that glows under certain lighting conditions (primarily UV). When a letter flies through automated sorters the stamps are exposed to a light source for a defined period of time. Shortly thereafter the luminosity of the stamp is measured and, if it glows with the right luminosity at the right wavelength, it passes. If not, it’s kicked out and examined.
So, to counterfeit postage stamps you would have to identify the specific pigment, wavelength and rate of decay for a stamp and then make the darn thing for, as mentioned above, a wee little bit of money.
Better to buy a truckload of forever stamps now and sell them when postage goes to $0.60 and pocket the difference.
I read something years ago about three computer guys in Italy who printed fake stamps of various sizes, designs, and values, almost all of which made it through the Italian postal system with no problem. Eventually they confessed. Apparently they got off with light punishment since their prank was not malicious. (One stamp said, in Italian, “I’ll unleash the chemical war of pasta and beans against the infidels,” and showed a picture of Saddam Hussein.)
I recall years ago that people tried reusing stamps that didn’t have a clear and obvious cancellation mark on them. Really it wasn’t worth the hassle for a 20 cent stamp to reglue it on a letter. But people would reuse stamps if possible.
Obviously, all businesses work at a markup, including criminal enterprises. I was suggesting that the only way to make money at a stamp-counterfeiting scheme was to find a greater fool to sell the stamps to, who would need to find an even greater fool, and so on, therefore a variant on a pyramid scheme.
So how does the system handle the new process where you can design your own stamp (legally!) with your own picture, or your new baby, or the company logo, etc. and then print them from your own computer printer right in your home or office? (See http://usps.us/206.) Do they have some kind of anti-counterfeiting stuff concealed in the printing somewhere?
Or do those get rejected by the automatic cancelling machine, then looked at by a postal worker, who recognizes them as self-printed stamps, and puts them back in the mail processing stream? That would mean that using such stamps could mean a slight delay in the mailing time.
I’ve never seen a “print your own” stamp, just the ads; but if I were designing them, I’d add a barcode somewhere (to the left of the stamp?) to provide details about the stamp.
Anyone seen any? When I do a google I get the USPS site that says send us your picture and we’ll send you preprinted stamps.
I believe in the Live It Up case (sorry, CTV) they were relying on the eyeballs of the postal workers to catch these.
When I was incarcerated in the late 80’s inmates would sometimes remove the stamps from letters they received and get the postal stripes off the stamps so they looked as if they hadn’t been used and re-use them.
Not really a huge scam but I suppose if enough people did that it would add up. I don’t know of anyone ever charged or convicted of this but I suppose it’s possible.
:eek: :dubious: