Empty Houses

by Jared

Sometimes, you don't want things arriving at your house.

Maybe you're trying to hide something from a family member, or you bought an illicit substance.  Perhaps you scammed your way into an online item and need it shipped somewhere that doesn't lead back to you.  You might even just be paranoid.

There's a simple solution: Empty houses!

Zillow.com is a website used for finding houses that are for sale within a specified area.  You just type a ZIP Code in, and you have a map of all the houses in that ZIP that are currently unoccupied.

So why not just go on Zillow, choose a house nearby, and send it there?  Additionally, USPS doesn't actually care what name is on the package.  Carriers follow a rule: "when in doubt, deliver."  They need the package to go to the destination.

It does not matter what name you decide on, just don't make it your real one.  If you put "John Smith," they'd still deliver it to the address specified.  Just choose a fictitious name.  You can keep it simple with names like:

Or you could mix it up and make it interesting with names like these:

It doesn't have to be a full name either!  USPS will still deliver to:

They're not worried about whether or not the person on the package lives there.  So when you want something shipped not to your house, you would go on Zillow, put whatever fictitious name you came up with, creative or simple, and ship it to that address.  When the package is delivered (you can check with the tracking number), dash over there and pick it up.  You would just want to oaks sure you time it so nobody's there.

USPS is one of the largest distributors of drugs in the United States and they don't even know it.

Well, technically they do know, but they can't prove it.  FedEx and UPS are allowed to search your packages if they believe there is something suspicious in them.  USPS, on the other hand, is legally not allowed to look inside of your mail.  A lot of people know this, and utilize it very cunningly.  Pounds of marijuana go through USPS and across the country every single day.  So when that package comes to the empty house, they also have no idea what's inside.

This whole thing sounds pretty illegal, so let's go over two scenarios.

Let's say you did a bad thing, and used a stolen credit card to buy a new pair of black Air Force 1s so you can rob people better.  You decide to go over to Zillow, find an open house, and then send it there with the name being "John Cena" so they can't see you.  You run onto the front porch, snatch it, and ride off into the sunset.  That is illegal.  In fact, it's so illegal you'd face credit card and mail fraud charges.

But what about this?

Alice lives with her fundamentalist parents.  Alice feels that she was meant to be male.  From now on, I will refer to Alice as Alex.  Alex wants to buy a book about people in his situation, but if his parents see it in the mail, they'll disown him.  So Alex calls his friend Gus and asks if he can have his mail sent there.  Gus says "yes," and the mail is sent there.  No crime is committed.

But let's switch out Gus's house for a Zillow house.  Alex decides to mail it to an unoccupied house, but pays for it legitimately.  Is this still illegal?  From my understanding, yes.  However, the police are not going to bother hunting Alex down over a book he legitimately paid for that he just happened to send to an empty house.  And even if they do apprehend him, any charges Alex faces will most likely be dropped due to the innocent nature of the situation, regardless of whether or not it's illegal.  He'd probably only face a mild reprimand or warning, if anything at all.  One might consider this to be a gray area.

Shipping information is only really a big deal in logistics.

They want to get the package there, and fast.  You could get packages shipped to a house under a different name, as long as someone consents to have their mail shipped there.  When you take away the idea of getting consent to send mail to a specific address, it becomes something of a crime.  However, it's only a really significant problem (IMHO) if it involves any kind of fraudulent activity.  At that point, it becomes mail fraud, and that's the bad one.  If you just want to ship a t-shirt you like to a Zillow house, and they do somehow catch you for that, you're most likely not going to face any real consequences.

Please keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, and this is just my understanding of it.

In case you couldn't tell, it's pretty damn difficult to get consent to send mail to an unoccupied house.  Unless the real estate agent magically decides she'll let you get your mail sent there, you won't have consent, making it illegal.  But what about Alex's situation?  I wouldn't really call that a crime, but the system may beg to differ.

It can be beautiful or it can be ugly.  Take the information I give you and make it beautiful.
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