The Verdict Was Mail Fraud!

New at Reason: Pranking the post office is fun, but is it art? Jesse Walker licks Michael Thompson's stamp act.

Comments

[Josh]

Wait... so why were they driving around Turkey photographing tanks?

[mtc]

maybe they are CIA, and the stamp biz was all an elaborate cover

[John Hensley]

Apparently the CIA has given up on the drug trade and now funds its covert ops through counterfeiting.

[spur]

What? Armenia and Turkey don't get along?

[Steve in CO]

we?d get letters from Disney," he explains. "They don?t like you monkeying around."

No kidding, I'd rather go up against the Mob than Disney.

🙂

[Kevin McGowan]

Cool Simpsons/Troy McClure reference. I'll add another that fits the story. Bart playing "Larry The Looter" video game: "Alright!
Stick it to The Man!"

[dj of raleigh]

In the early 80s we sent out letters stamped
with the magazine stamp sized stickers
that came with school magazine sales.
All letters went right on through.

I'd hate now to think that would have
the postal service spending, wasting,
money on scanners and special stamps
to stop the practice. I've come to
admire efficiency and detest waste.

[GaryM]

If it doesn't say "United States," "US Postage," or the like on the stamp, then it's not a fake postage stamp, and it's the fault of the employees if they treat a perforated adhesive sticker as a stamp -- though designs which minimize the identification of real US stamps as US stamps certainly don't help.

One stamp which i remember well was the "Alfred E. Newman 4 President" (with a prominent 4, which was the postage for a letter at the time) stamps which

[GaryM]

(Sorry -- my browser overlaid the text window over the "Post" button and I hit it by accident.) As I was saying: ... stamps which were included by the sheet in the magazine. I think I used a couple of those as a joke myself; I don't know whether the letters were ever delivered or not.

[Will Spencer]

This will definitely end you up on the Group W bench with the mother stabbers and the father rapers.

[M. Simon]

My favorite was when the VFW or some such issued flag stickers that looked a lot like flag stamps.