U.S. postal inspectors: Don't fall for counterfeit stamps

While mailing holiday cards and presents to loved ones, there’s a distinct possibility that you were frantically looking for more stamps at some point last week.

In fact, you may have been tempted to buy them in bulk, at a discounted rate, through any number of websites or email links.

U.S. Postal Inspector David Gealey’s advice? Don’t.

“I can’t speak to whether it’s lucrative at all, but we have gotten complaints from people about the use of counterfeit stamps,” Gealey said. “They’re offered for sale as rolls or in bulk.”

Such offers typically come advertised with a deep discount. Gealey said that should be a warning.

“We don’t discount stamps, so if you see them advertised for 20, 30, 40% off? That’s a red flag right there,” he said. “They’re likely going to be stolen or fictitious.”

Gealey said that even some vendors have been taken in by services offering fake stamps.

“Legitimate businesses have included a link on their website to sell stamps as a service to customers,” he said. “And sometimes unbeknownst to them, that link is to a website selling counterfeits. At a minimum, we shut down those websites, and if we can investigate and charge the people behind it, we try to do that as well.”

The most common stamp among seized counterfeits is the U.S. flag stamp, but postal officials said other stamp designs have also begun to show up in greater numbers.

In one case from early 2023, postal inspectors seized $2.5 million in counterfeit stamps coming into the country from China through ports in Los Angeles and New York.

In March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport seized 4,080 counterfeit U.S. postage stamps.

The fraudulent stamps were discovered after officers inspected packages labeled as “hand account/self-adhesive sheets.”

Once opened, officers found poor print-quality U.S. postage stamps. One package included 200 forever stamps with a declared value of $10. Forever Stamps cost $0.63 each and, had the package been genuine, would cost consumers $126.

Postal inspectors also regularly intercept packages containing counterfeit postage labels and, as part of a criminal investigation, packages sent with counterfeit postage can be seized. Possession of counterfeit stamps is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The Postal Inspection Service maintains a list of approved postal providers that is searchable by city and ZIP code. Most are grocery outlets and pharmacies. Some of those businesses do offer a small discount, but nothing like the double-digit sale prices promised by bogus providers.

“Most likely, those are going to be counterfeit,” Gealey said. “At a minimum, they’ll be stolen.”