From identity theft to global crime
Your product as a cover for drug traffic
A food company receives returned letters containing product samples which had not been sent by them. The envelopes and the letters imitate the company’s look & feel. The recipients are located all around the world. Could this be fraud? What now? It happened to one of our members.
Due to incorrect addresses, the letters were returned to the sender. The forged envelopes arrived at the real company instead. The company made an inventory of all these returned letters. They opened some product samples after it appeared that the content felt unusual, and had the content analysed. It turned out to contain amphetamines and thus the police were informed. The identity of the company had been abused to globally distribute drugs by post.
3 tips!
Procedure for opening post
Decide who opens which item. Does the reception receive everything or are there restrictions? When is a letter, invoice or parcel considered 'suspicious'? Do you escalate this internally?
Content analysis
Good evaluation and thorough investigation of the situation are important. As a member of Food Security, you can call on our network. Thanks to the sample analysis, the company was able to determine that these were amphetamines.
Notify the authorities
If you have concrete elements that indicate a crime (deceit, fraud, swindle…), it is advisable to notify the competent authorities.
Food Security helps my company by:
- giving advice in the event of peculiar complaints.
- giving training sessions on incident awareness. Both the reception and the other employees should realise that incidents may occur from an unexpected quarter. Procedures and training sessions are necessary to create the right reflexes.]
- having a network of experts, including a toxicologist.
Learning points
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Food Fraud: What if your product unintentionally contains banned substances?
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