Explain this drug scheme to me

Factual Questions
1

In reference to the recent news story about police invading the home of the Maryland mayor and killing his dogs, the article also mentions the package containing 30 lbs. of weed delivered to the mayor may be part of a new drug-trafficking scheme where shipments are sent to unknowing people and picked up off the porch shortly after by the person the shipment is actually for.

My question is, this “scheme” seems to be full of holes. I’m assuming you send the package full of weed to a random address because you certainly don’t want to send it to the real recipient, revealing their name/address/etc. However, what if the random address you send it to, ahem, *accepts *the package (kind of what happened in this situation)? It seems you just lost your expensive drug shipment! Is there some detail about this plan I’m overlooking, because it seems just as likely that someone would be available to accept the package rather than them not be there and let the FedEx driver leave it on the porch.

I’m also still trying to figure out why the dumb crooks would pick such a relatively high-profile house to send it to.

2

Logical. If they sent it to a known drug dealer it would be a red flag.

3

In a variant of this I heard a few years ago, the crooks scoped out houses enough to pick addresses where the owners appeared to be on vacation, or there was nobody home during the day. Of course, perhaps they did this and the mayor came home unexpectedly. And they probably didn’t know it was the mayor. Mayors don’t necessarily live at high profile addresses.

4

It seems like it would be much easier to set up an account under an assumed name at one of those mail shipment stores and just pick it up there.

5

Addendum - Berwyn Heights seems to be in the Washington, DC suburbs. Suburban mayors are often really low profile. People living in the suburb often don’t even know who the mayor is, and the mayor just lives in some random neighborhood.

6

I recall seeing a report that some of those arrested worked for the shipping companies themselves. It seems to me that it would be far easier for the packages to be shipped to a home along the route of one of the conspirators. If nothing goes wrong, the package would be snagged by the conspirator and not delivered to the mailing address.