Buy A Post Office On eBay, Get No Training, Run A Scam, Get Arrested

from the all-in-a-days-work... dept

Next time you think about buying a Post Office on eBay remember this story. We hear stories all the time about weird things going up for auction on eBay, mostly because eBay has become a new PR platform for selling weird or unusual items. A few years ago, a woman in a small town in Texas put up the general store she owned for sale on eBay. That store just happened to include a US Post Office. A married couple bought the store and started to run the Post Office themselves, despite having no training at all -- something they felt was a bit of a security threat. They claim they asked repeatedly for the training, but no one would return their calls. Postal Service accountants were calling and complaining about the way the couple filled out forms, but since they couldn't get the proper training, they just gave up filling out the forms altogether (or filled them out on an irregular basis). Then, the money orders started showing up. Boxes of 500, good for $1,000 each. The wife wanted to ship them back, but the Postal Service said she couldn't. She eventually hid about a million dollars worth of the money orders in her daughters diaper bag, afraid of what would happen to them. Eventually, since no one was paying attention to them, they decided to force the situation, and had someone purchases $4,500 worth of the money orders with a bogus check... which certainly got them noticed, and shut down the store. The details of this story all seem a bit sketchy, and the only account the NY Times comes up with is from the couple who bought the store. The story seems to raise many more questions than it answers, so it would be nice to hear the other side to get a better idea of what really happened. In the meantime, though, you might want to think twice about buying a Post Office on eBay.