A California man, John DeFiore, has received dozens of mysterious Amazon packages at his home for six months.
He said the parcel flood began with a single envelope containing two machine screws that arrived at his home in Woodside.
The package bore DeFiore’s address, but the name on the label was “Danial Williams.”
“Oh, somebody just made a mistake,” DeFiore recalled thinking in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News. “Maybe there’s a new neighbor named Daniel Williams.”
He found a Dan Williams living in the nearby town of La Honda, but he told DeFiore he didn’t know anything about the crews.
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More packages soon arrived, including solar panel cables, a video game console, a digital picture frame and a portable foot spa.
DeFiore said he and his wife, Jan, eventually stopped opening the packages and simply sent them back.
He said the packages went from being a minor annoyance to a major problem when his Amazon Prime credit card was charged $459 for a sofa that showed up at his home. He said his attempts to get a refund were complicated by the fact that the sofa wasn’t purchased on his Amazon account.
More fraudulent charges followed, totaling about $1,000.
DeFiore finally received a reply from Amazon saying the issue was being addressed, and his bank agreed to reverse the charges.
Amazon said it closed the account of the “bad actor” behind the mysterious packages, but did not offer any additional details.
DeFiore’s series of deliveries resembles a brushing scam, which involves Amazon sellers sending packages to random addresses so they can artificially inflate their number of positive reviews.
Joelle Angleheart of Chapleau, Ontario, was targeted by an apparent brushing scam last year when she received a box containing 1,020 condoms she never ordered and was charged $500.
Cindy Smith, of Prince William County, Va., was targeted by a similar scheme when she received more than 100 Amazon packages she had never ordered at her home earlier in 2023.
Amazon investigated and discovered the vendor was having packages shipped to random addresses to remove unsold merchandise from Amazon fulfillment centers.
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