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Oct. 8, 2023 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
17:01
Beware of this hybrid e-commerce PORCH PIRACY SCAM involving organized theft rings
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This is kind of a difficult podcast to do.
It'll be short but I'm sharing this with you as a warning that I hope this doesn't happen to you because it did happen to me and it's some new kind of hybrid Criminal ring that's combining e-commerce fraud with porch piracy.
So let me explain.
But I got targeted by this and as far as I can tell so far, I've had thousands of dollars, many thousands of dollars worth of gear and stuff and things ordered online using my credit card.
And stolen from the delivery address that I use.
So let me explain.
I mean, this is clearly a coordinated thing.
But because of who I am and my need for privacy and so on, I obviously don't order products and have them shipped to the place where I sleep.
I don't have anything shipped there.
And so I have things shipped to a rural address in Texas.
It's a residential address and then I have other people pick things up at that location.
It's kind of a long process, but that's how I get packages.
Of course, I need to order things like everybody else.
Power tools and ammunition and whatever.
Amazon sometimes or Ace Hardware or whatever.
And so that's the arrangement that I've used for many years.
And I made a couple of mistakes that I'll share with you here that apparently have resulted in thousands of dollars being stolen from me.
So here's the mistakes I made.
Well, let me explain what's been going on.
So someone has been logging into my e-commerce accounts at various online retailers.
And in some cases, I'm finding out creating new accounts with online retailers that I've never bought from before.
And by the way, eBay is one of them.
And I'm not blaming eBay.
It's not their fault.
I'll explain how I think people are breaking in.
But then whoever this is has been ordering products, high-dollar products, From these e-commerce sites using my credit card numbers, which I have various numbers and I have some virtual numbers and whatever, and they've been using those.
And then they've been waiting for these products to arrive.
They've been camping out at the arrival destination.
And I think I may have video of one of the vehicles thanks to a neighbor.
I'll mention that.
But they've been camping out, waiting for deliveries, and then stealing the high-dollar loot that they purchased online using my credit card.
And this is not just your normal porch pirates that follow UPS trucks around or whatever, and then they just randomly steal people's boxes from their porches.
You know, porch pirates do that all the time, but it's totally random.
I mean, they don't know what they're going to get.
It could be just useless garbage.
Oh, you got a box full of, you know, paper towels or whatever.
So what they did in my case is some kind of new hybrid crime, and I'm kind of curious if anybody listening to this, if you had this happen, but they knew what they were ordering, and I'm still going through now emails and credit card statements, and I'm finding that they ordered high-dollar power tools, they ordered auction items on eBay, they've ordered ammunition, and some other high-dollar items, some of which are kind of bizarre.
And they've had these shipped to this address, and then they've stolen them.
And the genius of this is that I can't prove that I never got these things, because they all show delivered.
So I've talked to some of my law enforcement buddies, and I asked them, should I go to the police on this?
I mean, frankly, the financial losses don't bother me as much as kind of the invasion of You know, privacy, I guess.
But they said, no, you can't prove that anything was stolen from you.
It's like this theft ring, like they went online.
Oh, let me tell you one of my mistakes.
I admit this freely.
I'm human.
I make mistakes too.
I use the same password across many e-commerce sites.
I use the same email and the same password.
And that's just laziness on my part.
I shouldn't do that.
I did it.
I think that's part of how this was exploited.
And it's not the same password that I use for logging into banks or anything like that.
And I use two-factor authentication on financial sites and things like that.
Or, you know, crypto or whatever.
But for e-commerce sites, I did use the same password for a lot of them.
And I think what happened is that somebody probably hacked one of the e-commerce companies that I buy from.
They probably got the customer list.
They probably got unencrypted credit card numbers and people's passwords.
You know, somebody out there, some e-commerce site that I shopped at had a break-in and maybe they don't even know about it.
Maybe they didn't even announce it or don't even know.
And so someone got all this information, probably sold on the dark web, probably a block of, you know, 50,000 customers had the same thing happen.
And then this theft ring, pretty smart cookies actually, went around to all the common e-commerce sites to see if the same login email and password would work.
And it did, because that's my fault.
So in effect, Yeah, they were kind of using stolen credit card numbers, but they also just logged in and they used credit cards that I had on file at e-commerce sites.
And that's my second mistake.
You know how when you place an order online and it says you want us to save your card number for future purchases?
And you probably should never say yes, but I did.
Again, out of convenience.
So some e-commerce sites have my credit card number, like eBay, for example.
And some others just have my credit card number.
So if somebody can log into my account, they can just order whatever, and they can have it on my credit card.
And then the third mistake I made...
There might be a fourth.
I don't know.
I'll keep thinking about it.
But the third mistake I made is...
Not checking my credit card statement and not checking my email with any real frequency.
I mean, now I've started to go back through statements and emails and I'm like, what the heck?
Because a lot of this stuff was just sent to my email like, oh, thank you for buying this and that.
And then I'm like, what?
I didn't buy any of that stuff.
If I had been checking my email, I would have seen that.
But I'm kind of busy.
I'm kind of busy fighting for humanity, you know?
I don't check emails all the time.
I even tell people, you want to email me, you've got to text me and tell me to look for your email.
Otherwise, it's too much.
I can't go through all these emails and there's a bunch of spam all the time.
You know how it is.
And so I didn't see it in the email, even though the orders were being sent to my email.
And I didn't notice it on my credit card for the same reason, because I don't look often enough on my credit card statements.
And there's also a very real issue where Some of the things that were being purchased were things that I would have bought ordinarily that can be expensive.
Like, for example, if I go on to MidwayUSA and I buy, let's say, a complete AR-15 upper, which you can just buy and have it shipped to you.
It's not a firearm.
It's the barrel and the bolt carrier group.
And let's say I want to buy a really high-end like Bravo Company, BCM, complete upper.
That thing could run you $1,200, $1,400, $1,500, whatever.
And so it's not weird for that to show up on my credit card since a lot of those have been backlogged ever since COVID. So sometimes you have to wait six months.
And so one day, six months later, boom, there's a $1,500 charge that pops up on your credit card.
That's not unusual for me to see because I'm often waiting on things.
Firearm parts or whatever, or optics, you know, binoculars, rangefinders, night vision, and these things are quite pricey.
And so those are the three mistakes I made.
Again, using the same password on different e-commerce sites, not checking my email or my credit card statements frequently enough, And what was the other one?
Well, also, I did not have security cameras at this location because I don't live there.
So didn't catch anybody on camera and therefore can't prove anything was stolen.
That's the thing.
There's no way I can go to the police on this.
I can't go to the credit card companies.
And claim fraud, because if they investigate it, it's gonna look like I bought stuff, got it, received it, and then claim to charge back, and that's not good.
You know, if you do that on purpose, that's a felony crime.
That's fraud against the credit card companies.
I mean, there was something that happened.
You know, that's interesting.
Recently, I had ordered a piece of musical equipment from Amazon, and it was about a $1,500 piece of equipment.
And it was not delivered initially.
I did not see the delivery.
It did not exist at this location.
And it was missing for days.
And I called Amazon.
I mean, this is all on the record, if anybody cares.
But I called Amazon and I said, look, this is not showing up.
What are my options?
And they said, check your neighbors, check any cameras you have, ask around, see if anybody found this.
And if they don't, call us back and we'll replace it.
So I said, okay, that's what I'll do.
So...
I did.
I checked with some of the closest people living nearby.
I looked on the sides of the roads and whatever.
Didn't see it.
Called Amazon back.
Said, look, I don't see this.
I mean, it looks like it was never delivered.
I don't have it.
And they said, okay, no problem.
We will ship a replacement for you.
And then the next day, apparently some neighbor got this, had this.
Because it shows up at the location with a note that says, oh, this was accidentally delivered to us, and here it is.
And so I called Amazon back, and I said, well, hey, cancel that replacement because I got the thing.
It showed up.
And, you know, I'm an honest customer.
I said this to Amazon.
I'm an honest customer.
I don't want you to lose money on this.
So cancel that, the replacement order.
And they did.
And so, but a dishonest person could have said, oh, I can get two of them, you know.
And I'm sure people do that all the time because there's a lot of dishonest people.
But I'm not a dishonest person.
So I called them back and I said, cancel that because I got the unit.
Well, that happens all the time.
So there's all kinds of complications with ordering products and getting products delivered.
And so given that I actually do buy a lot of preparedness supplies and ammunition and gun parts and musical equipment, like I said, I also buy a lot of laboratory-related equipment, things like that.
And food samples and things, I have quite a lot of a volume of shipments coming in and out, so it's easy for things to get lost.
And so in whatever way, this crime ring, this hybrid e-commerce porch pirate crime ring, they got me.
They got me pretty good, actually.
It's almost like There's a level of respect for the crime.
I mean, yeah, it sucks.
I lost a few thousand dollars, but man, these people are getting really clever about this.
And I guess they're getting desperate, you know, because of all the inflation and the dollar losing value and all these other things that are happening.
People get more desperate.
There's more crime taking place.
You know, probably going to see a lot more of this.
And that's why I'm sharing this with you.
So the action items on this, And by the way, I don't know what my total losses are yet.
There might be more stuff still to be stolen.
But I am going to install video cameras at this location.
Or at least game cameras or something like that.
So I'm going to do that.
I should have done that.
But my advice to you is, number one, check all your passwords on all the sites where you shop.
Including my store.
Change your passwords.
Have them unique if you can.
If not, rotate them every 90 days or whatever.
Use a new password.
Secondly, really monitor your credit card statements.
Do a better job than I did.
And also monitor your email for possible purchases.
I know that's difficult.
Oh, I forgot to mention, we do have an image of what looks like a truck, a black truck, like a full-length bed black truck, With what looks like a guy in it.
It looks like a bearded white guy with a big orange shirt is what I can tell so far.
I've got to take a look at this in more detail, but it's a vehicle of interest, we'll say, right now.
A black truck with a white bearded guy with a big orange shirt.
I don't know what that means.
It's like...
What?
It doesn't sound like the porch pirates, you know, but that's what we have so far.
And I'm doing some more digging, and we're going to take extra precautions, and I'm changing my passwords and things like that.
But man, don't let this happen to you.
It sucks.
It feels like being invaded, you know.
And somebody got away with stealing a bunch of loot that I have to pay for.
And who knows?
I mean, probably all this stuff is going to end up on eBay somewhere.
Or maybe they already have buyers because some of it was power tools.
And I buy a lot of power tools.
I buy a lot of Milwaukee power tools.
That's my favorite brand.
I mean, their stuff is just super rugged.
And those Milwaukee batteries, some of those batteries are like $300 a piece.
They're like gold.
It was like the ultimate barter item.
People can steal batteries and power tools.
They could just eBay that stuff immediately.
It's as good as cash almost.
Or they can sell it to their friends who are in the construction industry, you know, at a little discount.
I mean, power tools are as good as cash.
Just ask Lowe's and Home Depot why half the thefts out of their stores are power tools, batteries.
That's why it's all locked up.
So somebody got into my, you know, online e-commerce power tools accounts.
It's like, man, well, I hope you build something with that.
Try building a wall.
How about that?
Build a wall.
Maybe we'll cut down on some of this crime.
Then again, I don't know that these are even illegals that did this.
It might have been just desperate, hungry, broke Americans.
Who knows?
The situation is getting pretty crazy, but that's what happened to me, folks.
I'm not perfect.
I made some mistakes.
It's costing me.
But try not to make the same mistakes I made.
And I'll try to do better on this and have more surveillance on these remote delivery locations.
Drop locations, essentially.
What a world.
What a world.
Thanks for listening.
Mike Adams here.
Naturalnews.com and Brighteon.com.
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