from the soylentnews-special-investigations-bureau dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
How Amazon Helped Cops Set Up a Package Theft Sting Operation
In response to Amazon packages being stolen from people's doorsteps, police departments around the country have set up sting operations that use fake packages bugged with GPS trackers to find and arrest people who steal packages. Internal emails and documents obtained by Motherboard via a public records request show how Amazon and one police department partnered to set up one of these operations.
The documents obtained by Motherboard—which include an operations plan and internal emails between Amazon and the Hayward, California Police Department—show that Amazon's "national package theft team" made several calls to the Hayward Police Department and sent the department packages, tape, and stickers that allowed the department to set up a "porch pirate" operation in November and December of 2018. The documents also reveal that the bait Amazon packages included real-time location-tracking devices in order to surveil and track anyone who stole a package.
According to an "Operation Plan" obtained by Motherboard, the Hayward Police Department referred to the porch pirate operation as "Operation 'Safe Porch,'" and it lasted from November 12 to December 17, 2018. The document describes package theft in Hayward as a "significant problem" during the holiday season, and it characterizes Operation Safe Porch as a way to "arrest/prosecute those individuals committing this criminal activity."
"The operation will emphasize a pro-active approach in the suppression of this criminal activity and with the use of 'bait' packages affixed with GPS tracking devices, Surveillance and Covert Operations, Probation/Parole Searches and potentially Search Warrants," the document reads.
The document claims that the Hayward Police Department Criminal Investigations Bureau, units form the Hayward Special Investigations Bureau, and Hayward Crime Analysis all assisted with Operation Safe Porch. It also notes that the program was run four days a week, for 10 hours per day, and outlined the GPS, radio, and vehicles that were used in the program (including "an assigned undercover vehicle for surveillance and covert operations.")
Related: Amazon Plants Fake Packages in Delivery Trucks to 'Trap' Drivers Who Are Stealing
Jersey City PD, Amazon work together to catch package thieves
Hacker Makes a Flawless Booby Trap, Strikes Back Against Package Thieves
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Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Amazon uses fake packages to catch delivery drivers who are stealing, according to sources with knowledge of the practice.
The company plants the packages — internally referred to as "dummy" packages — in the trucks of drivers at random. The dummy packages have fake labels and are often empty.
[...] During deliveries, drivers scan the labels of every package they deliver. When they scan a fake label on a dummy package, an error message will pop up.
When this happens, drivers might call their supervisors to address the problem, or keep the package in their truck and return it to an Amazon warehouse at the end of their shift.
Drivers, in theory, could also choose to steal the package. The error message means the package isn't detected in Amazon's system. As a result, it could go unnoticed if the package were to go missing.
"If you bring the package back, you are innocent. If you don't, you're a thug," said Sid Shah, a former manager for DeliverOL, a courier company that delivers packages for Amazon.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-sets-traps-for-drivers-2018-9
[Mark Rober] was fed up with packages going missing. He kept receiving notifications that his shipments had been delivered, but when checking his porch he found nothing there. Reviewing the CCTV footage revealed random passers-by sidling up to his porch and stealing his parcels. It was time to strike back. Over six months, [Mark] and his friends painstakingly designed, prototyped and iterated the perfect trap for package thieves, resulting in a small unit disguised as an Apple HomePod. The whole scheme is wonderfully over-engineered and we love it.
The main feature of the device is a spinning cup on the top which contains a large amount of glitter. When activated, it ejects glitter in every directions. You could say it's harmless, as it's just glitter. But then again, glitter has a way of staying with you for the rest of your life — turning up at the least expected times. It certainly leaves an emotional impression.
The trap uses an accelerometer to detect movement, geo-fencing to determine when the package has left the property, glitter and a fart spray to make the thief regret it, and smartphones to capture the thief's reaction for the enjoyment of the hacker.
Also at BBC.
See also: Jersey City PD, Amazon work together to catch package thieves
Jersey City PD nabs 12 this week in porch package sting
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @03:59PM (4 children)
And yet none of these packages were stolen and no arrests were made.
(Score: 4, Funny) by ikanreed on Monday April 15 2019, @04:03PM (3 children)
We have two choices, we could either
A. Have cops learn statistics well enough to know the relative chance of busting a criminal in a sting operation must incorporate the overall rate of theft into their assumptions and find a microscopic chance of actually catching anyone.
or
B. Have cops do free PR work for a trillion dollar corporation.
You seem to favor A, so I have to ask. Why do you hate America?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @04:06PM (2 children)
I choose C. Train Wild Badgers To Protect Boxes On Porches.
Sure, people will have to choose a safe word the badgers understand while going through the Amazon checkout process. Still more entertaining than your A or B.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @07:09PM
(Score: 2) by TrentDavey on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:01PM
... go to a bricks and mortar store and buy it. Oh wait, there aren't any of those left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @04:03PM
We have this story about fake Amazon boxes and an earlier story about fake Amazon reviews [soylentnews.org]. Is Amazon really part of the Matrix?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday April 15 2019, @04:04PM (10 children)
One of the reasons packages get stolen is because it's relatively easy. But there's another aspect of it, namely knowing which packages are valuable enough to be worth taking the time to steal. It would be a pretty lousy caper to go through a neighborhood looking for packages, get to a place where you can open them, and discover "Oh boy, an ugly Christmas sweater, this will sure fetch me a lot at the pawn shop."
The obvious conclusion is that some Amazon warehouse employees are involved in the effort. They know what's in the boxes, and know exactly where they're going. They actually know both of those things better than management does, because they handle the actual materials. Whether they're part of a criminal enterprise who takes the job specifically to do this kind of work, or they get bribed into it once they work there, Amazon pretty clearly has an internal security problem.
In addition, there have been cases where what's going on is that the package that's ostensibly a copy of the Count of Monte Cristo or something will get filled not with a book but with illegal drugs, so that rather than taking the risk of sending a mule to get the drugs to Peoria the gangs can get Amazon to do that work for them, and the plan is then to retrieve the package right off of someone's porch. The unwitting customer complains that they didn't get their stuff, Amazon resends it, lather rinse repeat.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mobydisk on Monday April 15 2019, @04:12PM (3 children)
This sounds far-fetched. Any articles on this? I did find some isolated incidents, but you make this sound systemic which seems far-fetched.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday April 15 2019, @04:32PM
Insider theft is common in both retail and warehousing. It's apparently common enough that Amazon put together a montage of people they'd caught [retaildive.com].
One way to reduce your odds of getting caught are to attack a weaker point in the system. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the weakest point in the system is typically the several hours that a package sits completely unattended outside on somebody's porch. That way, you don't have to smuggle the goods out of the warehouse right under management's nose.
As for why they do this, what kind of loyalty would you expect to be able to buy for $8 / hour and no real prospects of career advancement?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Monday April 15 2019, @04:38PM
People that I know who work for Amazon have said they're quite ruthless about punishing this whenever they find it, to the extent they've periodically fired people on suspicion of it when too many packages under their watch ended up "damaged" or "misplaced" (via various excuses - it's not hard to find a reason to fire someone if you want to badly enough), at least at the warehouses in my region. Sometimes such rings have gone on for awhile (a few weeks or months) but they are usually short-lived. They do try to take steps to keep such things from being public.
Granted, those are the ones getting caught, but I don't think this is as common as conspiracy theorists believe.
I know a local thief was targeting household items for awhile before the police caught him, just going after big packages; they'd keep toilet tissue or groceries and throw out "pawnables" as useless/traceable. I don't know how the police caught the guy, I doubt it was sting. It's not only people going after salable junk that do this kind of thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @10:43PM
SystemC?!? Wtf
We just got over the crap systemD inflicted with still more to fix and now they bring out a C version???
#triggered
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @04:41PM (4 children)
I can't say that I make that intellectual jump from "packages get taken off of porches" to "insider criminal conspiracy and bribery". I won't disagree with you that with an organization the size of Amazon that you can't have the problems you mention (though I would be very surprised if it is anything but isolated edge cases given the efficiency and automation that Amazon uses in their warehouses. To me, this is far more like a car parked with open windows and something of interest on the seat.
In my area a couple of years ago two guys got busted between Thanksgiving and Christmas where they rented a box truck and were driving around stealing packages. When caught, they had 75 packages taken from 50 homes. It is way easier to just grab stuff and see what you get than it is to try to coordinate with an insider, at least for the random stuff you'd have in an Amazon warehouse.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday April 15 2019, @05:19PM (3 children)
But they got caught because they were taking unnecessary risk by grabbing 75 packages at once. Someone is going to eventually notice a box truck driving around stealing packages.
If you can narrow it down to a single package of high value, that can fit in a car, you can much more easily get away with it.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Touché) by Spamalope on Monday April 15 2019, @06:04PM (2 children)
The should have started with a bunch of empty boxes. Bring an empty box to the door with a missing or mutilated shipping address label. Then you can pretend you were trying to figure out where that one went if questioned while swapping boxes.
Do any delivery companies rent extra trucks on the holidays? You could get a uniform and make it look more official, and say you're new - a holiday temp.
No?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @08:00PM (1 child)
I live in a large rural city. Whenever it is anywhere near a busy time of year, the regular trucks stop showing and we start seeing Ryder and Penske trucks making deliveries. I'd assume it is similar in other places too.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Sunday April 21 2019, @06:03AM
Yeah, a lot of that is the "Amazon local delivery". They hire out local companies instead of UPS/FedEx/USPS. When it gets busy you end up with random guys with rented trucks and vans. I've seen some that looked like someone's personal vehicle, not a commercial one.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 15 2019, @08:00PM
I remember reading at least one case where the thief was busted for what turned out to be a jumbo pack of toilet paper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @04:43PM
How dare these people try to stop the post-delivery distributors from sharing their content!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @07:08PM (1 child)
So instead of paying for a service/post office that will actually check and ensure that packages are safe, they are just leaving things around then ask for the police paid by public fund to oversee that packages are safe.
How much are they not paying in taxes again?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @08:58PM
Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. It's the American Way!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @08:11PM (2 children)
I live in a small town and work in a larger city 50km away. I have all my amazon purchases (about 1 per month) shipped to my employer. It is much quicker than having things shipped to my home, as they normally come through post, and the only time I can pick them up from the post office is on Mondays, the only time they are open while I am not at work. Not sure why others don't do this. Many of my co-workers now do this also, for a variety of reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 15 2019, @10:47PM (1 child)
My employer stopped allowing employees to have parcels delivered to work some time after 9/11
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @03:34PM
Found the Government Employee :P