Maybe it’s to spread anthrax.
While we’re on the subject of scams, I don’t get the “brushing” thing and I read the Wikipedia article. What is the desired result from the point of view of the scammer? What is the benefit to him/her?
I once responded to one of those Chinese ads on Facebook. I bought a camera drone for fifty bucks. After a few weeks, a cheap pair of flip-flops (sandals) that would have been too cheap for the dollar store showed up. When I complained, the retailer offered to give me a discount on my next purchase. Their website disappeared a few days later. PayPal refused to refund my payment because the retailer confirmed, correctly, that a delivery had been made. The fact that the thing in the package was nothing close to what I asked for didn’t matter.
Was I the victim of a brushing scam, or (as I suspect) just a victim of my own stupidity?
Yep. So that’s 5 types we’ve seen in the posts here so far.
A few times I’ve tried to buy overseas seeds that weren’t marked as seeds (or biological material) and they got irradiated by the post office. I didn’t discover this until I tried planting them and nothing grew… three times. Don’t carriers irradiate everything now ever since the anthrax scare of the late 90s?
In order to have an account that appears in good standing with Amazon, Shopify, PayPal, credit card companies, etc, vendors often have to prove they have shipped things to satisfied customers.
So they use your name and address to create a fake account, pretending to be you as the satisfied customer. The reason they actually ship something rather than just lying about that is that the package tracking data adds a layer of supposed authenticity
… and so the (fake) 4-star rating is from a “confirmed” purchaser.
In those cases (at least when a lot of this was going on with ebay), the trick was that you had to say (or check the box that says) “received incorrect item”. A lot of people, upon buying something for $100 and getting something that costs a dollar are so angry knowing they got scammed, will tell ebay/paypal/their credit card company that they never received the item they ordered. The scammers know you’ll do that. They also know that all they have to is provide the tracking number which proves they sent something to you and that’ll be the end of it.
However, if you say you received the wrong item, now they have to prove that they sent you the correct item.
IIRC from years ago, some ebayers were even running a scam where they could send you the correct item, with proof, and still switch it along the way.
The aliens from Invasion of the Body Snatchers finally got enough of a budget to buy postage.
What’s all this about the Seeds? THE SEEDS -PUSHIN'TOO HARD - YouTube
But why not just an empty box?
I think they are using scam in a different way than you are. As alluded to up thread, the possible goal is to do damage to plants or food based animals. It’s also apparently spread beyond the US, as there are reports of similar packages in Canada and the UK. I haven’t heard of any in Europe, but I’d guess there must be a few there too. My WAG on this is that they are hoping someone will either plant the things or throw out the packages which will put them in a landfill somewhere, with the potential for them to be scattered that way. I can’t think of any other reason why someone would send random seeds all over the place.
I saw a report that they were marked with China Post, which is the Chinese postal service. I believe the China Post has said it’s not from them, so is a hoax. I also saw that though a lot of these are from China, some are from other South East Asian nations. From what I was reading the other day they still haven’t figured out what the seeds are or what issues they might cause. There was some mention that it might not be the seeds but insect eggs that would be the issue, but they really don’t seem to know at this point. I guess it’s harder to figure this out than I would have thought it would be.
Or love. Which will get you like a case of anthrax.
I occasionally order something from Wish or a Chinese seller on Amazon and long shipping times are expected. Sometimes as long as three months have passed, so a packet from China arriving at a random time isn’t going to raise any flags.
Admitted, not everyone is in the same situation, but there are more than a few of us out here. If it’s got my name on it, I’m opening it. One of my mental memory games is to see if I can guess/remember what it is from the weight and feel before opening it.
ETA: I really doubt it to be an attempt at agricultural espionage. There are probably thousands of foreign agents who would be happy to participate in a low risk activity of sowing a handful of seeds into someone’s crop.
I would agree with this if we weren’t talking about so many cases not just all over the US but now in Canada and the UK…that we know of. It’s now been seen in over 27 states in the US. And the seeds seem different…I’ve seen pictures of at least 5 different types, and while I know next to nothing about seeds they are widely varied. I definitely wouldn’t rule out agricultural espionage at this stage.
While it’s true you could send them to your own agents, I think that’s actually higher risk than doing it this way, assuming this is what’s happening. If the US or other countries have your agents under surveillance, or if they have been turned, then sending this sort of thing to them would pretty much identify the country doing it, and such a thing could easily be considered an act of war. While seeds coming in from unknown senders to random citizens is much harder to trace and confirm exactly who is doing it. Just my thought on it anyway, FWIW.
If it is agricultural espionage then I would think their plan was/is to send packets of actual bad seeds to their agents and to spam packages of harmless seeds to hundreds or thousands of randoms as cover. If they were sending harmful seeds to everyone, inspections on imports would ramp up by orders of magnitude if not completely blocking them.
True, though you run the same risk, if you assume that at least some of your agents are being watched or have been turned. At any rate, it’s speculation. I can’t think of any other reason why someone (or several groups) would be sending random seeds to the US, UK and Canada that doesn’t involve some sort of threat. If it’s an actual internet scam the purpose is beyond me outside of agricultural terrorism of some kind.
Is Xi Jinping (China’s President) known for being a practical joker?
I would say not, since he banned Winnie the Pooh and Piglet when Chinese netizens noted the resemblence between him and one of his other advisors. And Tigger was Obama, which he also didn’t like, probably because Tigger is so much cooler. 
Applause!
Have you tried reading this and the other thread explaining brushing?