14 Dec 2025 - AJ
This week’s scam is legitimately dangerous because it involves the victim in a crime against other people.
It was another one off of the scams subreddit, of course. The post involved someone who had been contacted about an AliExpress item that was ‘accidentally’ sent to their old address. The scammer claimed that they had shipped something to this person in 2010 and so the person’s address was in their autofill. That event had a ‘happy’ ending for the would-be victim, as they contacted the local law enforcement and had them take custody of the package.
Prior to the De Minimus going away in my country, I used to order off AliExpress. And I can tell you that after my first shipment, I never had to enter my address again. Also, I definitely would have wanted my item and would have absolutely triple checked to make sure I added the correct address. (And if I hadn’t, I would have apologized to the seller, accept the item had gone to a wrong adress, and paid for a new shipment.)
Scam dropshippers like AliExpress because it’s very cheap, and also because they use very obscure logistics companies instead of the big main ones. I can’t tell you how many times my AliExpress packages showed up with no warning from fly-by-night logistics companies. The scammers might say “refuse the package” but you can’t when it shows up with no warning!
(I do really need to cover the Parcel Mule and Brushing scams. Maybe next year!)
Not related, but I will be taking the rest of the year off. My next article and blog post would have been the 28th, and I will be busy taking a little vacation of my own that week.