Change-of-address fraud is on the rise, almost tripling to 23,000 cases last year, according to new data from the United States Postal Service.
Scammers changing an address either online or in person have been a nightmare, one family told Jesse Jones.
Travis Palmer of Tacoma has an extremely rare metabolic disorder called Barth syndrome, which affects his heart, muscles and growth.
A scammer changed Travis’ address, directing vital equipment for Travis more than a thousand miles away to the scammer’s home in Nevada.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Travis’ mother Carra said.
John Wiegand from the United States Postal Inspection Service says out of 36 million changes of address made annually in the U.S., only 36,000 come back with some sort of issue.
But the Palmers said they have faced an issue twice.
“When it happens twice to somebody, (it) happens multiple times,” Wiegand said. “That’s an indicator to us that something a little more (is) going on here.”
For more than a decade, the USPS Office of Inspector General has filed reports on issues in the postal services change-of-address process.
In 2008, the OIG reported that the Postal Service should improve controls to ensure proper authorization and validation of COA requests.
But in 2018, a report said the USPS “lacks a control requiring customers to present a government-issued form of identification for review when submitting a hardcopy COA.”
And in April 2022, new data revealed fraudulent changes of address…
