Every package that is suspected of illegal activity are held in temporary custody of the USPIS while they apply for a seach warrant. Seach warrants are generally filed withing whatever district the package is held up in.The application will state the reason for application, such as potential narcotics violation. It will include an affidavit of the United States Postal Inspection Task Force Officer. They will state their purpose, give agent background, and provide a statement of probable cause that includes parcel information, shipping anomalies, narcotics detection K9 sniff, method and means of using the postal service: refers back to training and experience, followed by their conclusion. This is sent to a Magistrate Judge to be signed off on. Once that happens they will serve the search warrant and inspect the package. For as long as i have lurked here i have seen little mention of PACER. PACER will give you endless examples of why packages are held/searched/seized. To search PACER you must have a log in, you must also pay $0.10 a page. I will not be uploading any documents. PACER tracks and logs who views and downloads these documents, so i will not take any chances in exposing my identity. PACER allows you to do an advanced search, you can choose the district, date case was filed, etc. The parcels that end up getting searched/seized, when they file the search warrant return it will tell you what was in the package. The search warrant also includes the package tracking number, sender and recipiant information. Some of the more important takeaways that trigger a package to be suspected of illegal activity is the state a parcel is sent to and from. FAKE ADDRESSES, this is one of the biggest triggers. Who knows what software the Feds use for their investigations? Thompson Reuters CLEAR an online public and proprietary records database used by law enforcement and government agencies to verify names and addresses. If the name and associated address doesn’t match in the system its flagged and scrutinized. That goes for both the sender and recipient. After the news of the Monopoly Market officially being seized, i recevied word that pre-indictment plea negotiations are in the works for some of those vendors investigated in Operation SpecTor. For those who want more information into prior tor operations, searching the news tab on justice(dot)gov for dark web will populate many press releases with associated documents. I highly suggest creating a PACER account and searching through old and new cases that are being filed. If you have every had a package seized, you should be able to find the search warrant tied to it. For those that want to stay ahead of the seizures, make sure the vendor you use has some common sense. Every single priority/priority express package is processed through a system and is monitored more heavily than in the past. They claim Operation SpecTor to be one of the largest international operations against darknet trafficking for fentanyl and opiods due to the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartel connections they associtated within Monopoly Market after they siezed the servers. They had access to the servers for almost a month before Monopoly went offline. Stay alert and focused, the glowies aren’t stopping anytime soon.
I used to vend for a short time years back. Noticed things at multiple post offices that made me feel uneasy and never looked back. Between full staff changes and the ways some of my non dw packs were being handled after giving them to the postal employess(aggressive bending and squeezing of the package, shaking, sniffing) I decided that life wasnt for me and stopped faster than i started. I never had a pack seized wether vendor or customer, freedom was my motivator and plan to stay that way. I stewed on the idea of making this post for most of today. I offer my knowledge for the sake of OPSEC.