If this is really about a fine for counterfeiting a stamp, isn't £5 astonishingly low? In the US that's a serious federal felony with up to five years in prison.
The term "fine" seems confusing here. If you look at the form sticker, it seems apparent that £5 is just the on-delivery postage rate for an unpaid item. Different postal services handle this differently, but it's not unusual that a mailpiece that's lacking sufficient postage will be delivered to the recipient if they pay the postage, and it's also not unusual to make that a higher rate to account for the extra work involved in notifying the recipient and collecting it. Under some postal systems you can do this totally intentionally by marking a mailpiece COD.
Maybe Royal Mail really does call this a fine, but it seems like it's just a typical higher "postage due" rate, thus the still rather nominal amount. Paying is optional for the recipient, they could just ignore the notification and it won't be delivered.
The use of this approach for counterfeit seems sort of unwise considering the accusation involved in counterfeit postage, the USPS returns the piece to the sender in that case. But the items on the sticker make me think that Royal Mail has a general bent towards offering delivery no matter what. USPS would also return to sender if there's no postage at all, assuming the piece doesn't indicate the postage should be paid by the recipient. But you can see that the £5 sticker here is the same one used in that case.
Sometimes the situation is complicated by postal policy, for example UPU policy for international mail tends to strongly prefer attempting to deliver a mailpiece over returning it, so "postage due" stickers seem more common on international mail (particularly since the international rates can be confusing and it's easier to accidentally underpay).
It's worse than that. They introduced new stamps with barcodes and let you trade in your old lawfully obtained postage for the new barcoded stuff. They are marking some of their own lawfully obtained stamps as counterfeit and by dint of doing so stealing from their citizenry.
It's roughly analogous to having bought speed guns from an incompetent vendor which sometimes read 200 kph no matter what the speed and insisting their cops continue to use them and ticketing per normal because it would be very expensive to replace the guns.
What, you don’t think the postal court run by the Post Office will rule against the Post Office? Come on, there’s only a small chance of being sent to Rwanda in a crate if you file a case against them, hardly worth worrying about.
You kid, but I imagine this will quickly be abused by bad actors to harass victims of online doxxing as ordering pizzas and (in more serious cases) swatting is.
I think it's important to internalize that stamps are like a form of currency[0]. Like you stick it on the envelope to pay the shipping fee. There are tax stamps/revenue stamps which are used to pay for things in a way that is hard for the fee collector themselves to steal.
I applied for a visa-related thing a month or so ago. The fee was 6000 yen, so I stuck 2 3000 yen stamps on the application form. I had paid the application fee, the money can't be stolen by the public servant taking the application form (well, not easily, at least, I'm sure there are sleight of hands), and the purchasing of the stamp happens at a trusted third party that could commit fraud but is heavily incentivized not to (on account of me being able to directly cite where I bought it, and the agency knowing who I am).
[0]: Pedants who want to say it isn't or that it's _exactly_ a form of currency: please go away
>I think it's important to internalize that stamps are like a form of currency[0].
So much so that the original Ponzi scheme involved arbitraging the price of stamps via international reply coupons (and then promptly got way out of hand).
I doubt they ever prosecute anyone for counterfeiting a stamp, but if the law only forbid counterfeiting 100 stamps a counterfeiter would do 99 at a time.
They hire someone to take each batch from them. So at best, you can only ever prosecute a fall guy, not the skilled counterfeiter.
In essence, it's easier to make any counterfeiting illegal, and then not prosecute the person who once prints a picture of a stamp and tapes it to a letter. Trying to make counterfeiting legal in certain situations can be abusable.
And so they get prosecuted for incitement, conspiracy and organized crime.
Seriously, as a rule of thumb, none of those extremely simple loopholes you can come up in five seconds of thinking work: there people were before you, and they too could think (even though in case of lawmakers it can sometimes be hard to imagine that they can actually think).
If selling 99 stamps is legal, I'm not inciting them to crime, I'm selling them the maximum allowable amount that isn't a crime. Similar with conspiracy and organized crime.
And yeah, these loopholes don't work because people tried them and now counterfeiting one stamp is illegal. That's my point.
My other post makes my actual point, this is just for fun.
Imagine I own a setup that allows me to produce counterfeit stamps. Every fifteen minutes I make 99 and then place them for sale. I sell them, then make 99 new counterfeit stamps and repeat the process.
All the risk is offloaded to anyone that buys more than 99 stamps, while the person capable of making them is safe barring some sort of mistake. All their money comes from a legal sale, meaning they're under no obligation to make sure their customer isn't reselling the stamps. So if the middle men gets arrested, the operation can continue immediately.
Yes, I can think of issues too, like eventually they stake out your location (though they'd probably need warrants of some sort.) I still think it shows that allowing someone to counterfeit 99 stamps opens loopholes the current law stops.
Oh, and from your other post, there are $9 and $30 stamps, meaning this method could counterfeit over $10,000 an hour.
So ignoring that you're the only one that suggested smaller batches would be entirely legal:
All a prosecutor needs to do is show that you made two batches. If you make a batch every 15 minutes, how do you expect not to get caught?
If they catch the middleman delivering two batches, and the middleman snitches, you're done. Or even if they have one batch, but they get offered a reward to say where they got it. Then the authorities only need to get evidence you made 1 more stamp.
And don't tell me you're going to sell to a brand new middleman every 15 minutes.
No, my entire thing has always been based on possession being the crime. The current law is written to outlaw creation too, but I don't see how that could stay if creating 99 counterfeits is legal, as proving this was the 100th counterfeit you made would be a challenge.
Even if the middleman flipped, unless you made them in front of them you could say you got them from someone else.
Yes, they may eventually be able to pin it on you, but under the current system they can instantly charge anyone that is a serious counterfeiter and ignore someone who counterfeit one stamp. They don't need to bother making someone flip then somehow proving you've made at least 100 stamps.
I will say, this explains most of our disagreement, with a bit more coming from my opinion that making this a misdemeanor would still allow some abuse, depending on the punishments.
And I'm done, I no longer find this fun. I don't think the current law is being used to unjustly punish people, and that's good enough for me.
> No, my entire thing has always been based on possession being the crime.
Then why did you say "if the law only forbid counterfeiting 100 stamps"??
I'm done too, because my entire argument was based on what you actually said, not what you secretly meant and never clarified.
Also the "unless you made them in front of them" excuse about proof could be applied to making even 1. You're grasping at straws to make conviction sound more difficult than it is.
This may shock you, but I spent about twenty seconds on my original comment. I certainly didn't have an editor go over it to ensure my actual point of view was getting across. Hell, you can see the edit I made showing when I realized we may be talking past eachother with possess/create.
>Even after that, you were still insisting there were loopholes.
After clarifying my position, I figured you'd either reply with "yes, we were on different wavelengths" or you'd accept we were talking about possession. So when you continued, I assumed you were talking about possession too. My mistake.
Yes, the parents question is meant as "where did the idea that doing 99 'at a time' would somehow bypass a law about >= 100 being illegal comes from?".
How would having 99 counterfeit stamps violate that law?
I think you/the other person (assuming that's what their question meant) took it as "each page printed only has 99, but they're still printing multiple pages per run" while I meant "each run has 99 stamps, then they distribute them."
edit or you think the law could be based on how many counterfeit stamps they had made, not possession. Dunno, we're really spending too much time attacking my bullshit hypothetical that was meant to say "make it hard for the law to have a loophole."
> each run has 99 stamps, then they distribute them
In that case they're not making much money per batch and they have to only ever get caught once in their life, so it's not much difference to them, it only makes a significant difference to someone that isn't mass-producing stamps.
> Dunno, we're really spending too much time attacking my bullshit hypothetical that was meant to say "make it hard for the law to have a loophole."
Well I don't think the original had any loopholes, which is why I'm pushing back on your attempt to say that by pointing out a loophole.
The original or real law considers counterfeiting one stamp a crime, which I think is fine.
I took issue with somebody criticizing that law by saying only counterfeiting one stamp shouldn't be a crime. So I pointed out that if you made some arbitrary non-one number the breaking point you're opening up loopholes. I'm not trying to introduce loopholes, the law is what it is to prevent loopholes.
And the ridiculousness of counterfeiting one stamp being a felony is avoided by not prosecuting anyone who only counterfeits one stamp.
there are countries where it’s not a serious crime to counterfeit postage? I think the penalty is double (up to 10 years) in the United Kingdom for example.
Boggs was first arrested for counterfeiting in England in 1986, and was successfully defended by the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC & Mark Stephens and acquitted.
as the cases of Geoffrey Robertson are worth the rabbit hole, and the maintaining of transient accolades poses an update issue.
I'll leave the QC -> KC edit for others and wonder how many dated QC's are on wikipedia and whether a QC who died before the Queen remains a QC or becomes a post mortem KC ?
Surely it's correct to call him QC when writing about an event in 1986, but if it were in the present "Geoffrey Robertson KC wrote a recent memoir about his defence of Boggs...". This isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia style guide, as far as I can see, but for example the article on Princess Diana lists "spouse: Charles, Prince of Wales (later Charles III)".
Transgenderism follows the opposite convention: once you transition to a new name and gender, you do so retroactively and all existing publications about you become dated, inaccurate and offensive. But I think that's the exception here in normal writing style.
I dare say, I wasn't sure how the QC | KC accolade was treated, but that does pass the sensible test.
I note that:
After being turned down by several leading lawyers, Dennis and Anderson secured the services of barrister and writer John Mortimer, QC (creator of the Rumpole of the Bailey series) who was assisted by his Australian-born junior counsel Geoffrey Robertson; Neville chose to represent himself. At the opening of the trial in June 1971 Mortimer stated that "... [the] case stands at the crossroads of our liberty, at the boundaries of our freedom to think and draw and write what we please".
Forging stamps is up to 10 years in the UK, it's considered the same as counterfeiting money.
But I think it has to be proven that it was intentional, so if the sender was simply scammed by someone selling fake stamps that wouldn't be prosecutable.
It's not really a fine for using the counterfeit stamp. After all, the recipient pays it and they had nothing to do with acquiring or placing the stamp whatsoever.
So it's not really a fine in the criminal sense. And I assume you don't admit any wrongdoing or avoid prosecution by paying it. It's more like a processing surcharge.
https://puryearlaw.com/2015/12/27/federal-counterfeit-postag...