Say I’ve stolen your CC#. I go online and order a $700 masturbation chair.
Where do I ask them to ship my chair? Not to my home address, I assume (what could possibly make it easier to track me down?). They won’t ship it to a P.O. box (and again, I could be fairly easily located). If to some random address, say, an abandoned house…would it even be delivered to an obviously vacant home? And if so, what do I do, lurk in the bushes all day waiting for the delivery?
There was an interesting story on one of those news-magazine shows, that tracked a few people from a credit card fraud ring operating out of West Africa. They would convince ignorant patsies stateside to take a job as a “distributor” and pay them a small fee. Then the fraudsters would ship merchandise bought with stolen cards to the distributor’s house, who would then re-ship the items at his own cost to various locations in Africa. They were convinced that they were legitimate partners in an African electronics importing business.
You don’t have to ship to a vacant house, just one where the people probably aren’t going to be home at the time of delivery. With so many houses empty during the day when people are at work, it isn’t difficult to scope out. In your typical suburb, nobody is going to notice when you drop by and pick up the package that was left in front of somebody’s door. Particularly if the item is small (order an inflatable doll, instead, which is presumably shipped deflated). I’m actually amazed that more deliveries aren’t pilfered by people cruising around looking for packages on doorsteps.