The Reshipping Scam: How Fake Work-From-Home Jobs Turn You Into a Criminal

You answer an ad for a work-from-home job. The pay sounds good—maybe $20 an hour or more—and the work seems simple: receive packages at your home, inspect them, repackage them, and ship them overseas. The company sends you prepaid labels and even covers the postage. No cold calling, no sales quotas, no inventory to sell. It looks like a cushy side gig. But it’s a trap. This is the reshipping scam, and it’s one of the fastest-growing employment ripoffs hitting middle-class Americans right now. And here’s the hard truth: if you fall for it, you don’t just lose money. You become a criminal accessory.

Reshipping scams operate on a simple premise. Criminals buy goods—usually high-end electronics, designer clothing, or luxury items—using stolen credit card numbers or hacked payment accounts. They can’t ship those items directly to themselves without getting caught, so they need a middleman. That’s you. You get the packages, you re-label them, and you send them to an address overseas or to a “processing center” that’s actually just another shell address. The criminals get the stolen merchandise, and you get a paycheck that eventually bounces or never comes. But by then, you’ve already helped launder stolen goods across borders.

The job postings look legitimate. They appear on reputable job boards like Indeed, Monster, or LinkedIn, often under titles like “Shipping and Receiving Clerk,” “Inventory Assistant,” “Fulfillment Coordinator,” or simply “Work From Home – No Experience Needed.” The company might have a professional-looking website, a phone number, and even a fake HR person who emails you a proper offer letter. They may ask for your driver’s license or Social Security number to run a “background check.” That seems normal. But the critical red flag is that they never meet you in person, never do a video interview, and never ask about your skills. The only requirement is that you have a home address and are willing to receive and forward packages.

What happens next is insidious. For the first few weeks, you receive shipments, repackage them, and send them along. You might get paid via a check or a direct deposit. The check clears—at first. Then, after a month or two, the bank reverses the deposits because the checks are fraudulent. Or the company simply disappears, and you’re stuck with hundreds of dollars in unpaid shipping fees that you were supposed to be reimbursed for. Worse, law enforcement picks up the trail. When the victims of credit card theft report their losses, the police trace the shipped packages back to your address. You become the suspect. You are the one who physically handled stolen merchandise. The actual criminals are overseas, untouchable. You are in your living room with a stack of evidence.

Prosecutors don’t always go easy on reshipping victims. They often treat it as criminal receipt of stolen property or money laundering, even if you were duped. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that thousands of Americans have been caught in reshipping scams, and many have faced criminal charges. Even if you avoid jail, your credit takes a hit, your bank account is frozen, and you become a target for identity theft because you handed over your personal information. And let’s be blunt: the only reason you were hired is that the scammers need you to be the fall guy.

How do you spot this ripoff before it’s too late? First, any job that asks you to receive and reship packages to foreign addresses is a massive red flag. Legitimate companies handle their own logistics. Second, if the interview is conducted entirely by text, email, or a chat app like Telegram or WhatsApp, walk away. Real employers at least do a video call. Third, if the company promises high pay for unskilled labor that you can do in your pajamas, it’s too good to be true. Fourth, look up the company’s physical address on a map. If it’s a residential house or a UPS Store mailbox, that’s not a real business. Lastly, search the job title plus “scam” online. Chances are, you’ll find reports from victims.

If you’re already in the middle of a reshipping job and suspect it’s a scam, stop immediately. Do not ship any more packages. Contact your local police department and file a report with the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov. You may also need to notify your bank and credit card companies. And brace yourself: the police may want to confiscate the packages as evidence. Cooperate fully. You’ll have a better chance of being treated as a victim rather than a perpetrator if you come forward.

No one wants to admit they were conned. But falling for a reshipping scam isn’t stupidity—it’s being exploited by professionals who know how to make lies look like golden opportunities. The next time you see a work-from-home job that asks you to do nothing more than forward packages, remember: that package is stolen. And the only person who will pay for it is you.