It'd be one thing if people were mailing stinky weed and FedEx were turning a blind eye, but how are they supposed to check every package for substances / make sure every recipient has a prescription for controlled ones?
The DEA wants to warrantlessly search all packages going through private carriers. They've done this with UPS, but FedEx was rightfully telling them to fuck off and this is the price they pay.
The part about setting up special credit policies for these pharmacies so that FedEx wouldn't lose money when said pharmacies were shut down is pretty clear that they knew there was something wrong, but they turned a blind eye anyway.
could it be just some half-automated "big data"-style analysis identifying clients who are at higher risk of default and thus getting special credit policies. And i'd say it is a successful analysis at that if illegal pharmacies were among the businesses put into that set.
One can imagine how any reasonable automated classificator working over previous history would put a business with 2 such attributes like "business: pharmacy" and "location: foreign" into the category with higher risk.
As a side note - we have a "reasonable person" test in courts today, and, as more and more of things are being automated, i think we'll have a "reasonable automated classificator/learning system" tomorrow :)
That's definitely not what the indictment alleges.
beginning
in June 2004, FEDEX established an Online Pharmacy Credit Policy that applied only to its Internet
pharmacy shippers. Under this policy, all Internet pharmacy shippers had to be approved by the Credit
Department prior to opening a new account. Existing Internet pharmacies had to be reviewed by the
Credit Department to ensure that they had adequate financial security. In arguing for the Online
Pharmacy Credit Policy, FEDEX's Managing Director of Revenue Operations stated "[a]s the past few
weeks have unfolded it is becoming more apparent to us that many of these companies are fraudulent
and doing business outside Federal regulations."
Not all online pharmacies are illegal. Think of companies shipping stuff like catheters, diabetic supplies, oxygen equipment....many of those require a prescription.
Online contact lens sellers (at least ones I've used) do verify your prescription. Is it up to FedEx to investigate whether their customers are required to and actually do verify prescriptions?
If FedEx is signing up these businesses under special terms like this (even if they are the same ones used for legitimate businesses), it would seem (from the outside) like they were looking closely enough at the business to recognize that something was fishy.
This is different than if FedEx was just accepting packages regularly from someone that kept dropping by at the local FedEx b&m store.
I don't have the full story, so I'll I can do is say that it raises the likelihood (even just a little bit) that FedEx could have known. I guess one of the relevant questions to ask would be: "Is it standard for FedEx to be so hands-off when signing these businesses up that they have no clue what the business even does?"
"Is it standard for FedEx to be so hands-off when signing these businesses up that they have no clue what the business even does?"
As far as I'm concerned it certainly should be. Is it next going to be illegal to sell snack foods to someone with munchies? Let the police be the police.
I'm not saying how anything should be. These types of deals are risk-management for FedEx. It seems highly unlikely that FedEx did no homework on businesses that it was entering into risk-management deals with.
> Is it next going to be illegal to sell snack foods to someone with munchies?
Why do you feel the need to trot out strawmen already?
I was just saying that FedEx entering into such agreements just increases the likelihood that they knew something. I didn't even say by how much. I definitely said nothing about whether they should be criminally or civilly liable for anything. The question that you posted wasn't even meant to be rhetorical. I was actually raising the question because it's relevant information.
I'm basically siding with no one here, and just making passing observations. It would be nice to not be attacked for it.
[Edit: I guess I should add that the 'something' they might have known need not have been actionable information, or even information that makes them liable for anything. I'm just stating that it makes them more involved with said companies than, say, me if I ship a package from a FedEx store. FedEx, for example, probably knows about their revenue and shipping logistics to be able to evaluate their risk-management formulas...]
I didn't intend my comment as a personal attack, or even a direct reply. So I apologize that my wording gave that impression.
However, I stand by my position that it shouldn't matter what FedEx knows or "could/should have known." FedEx is not the police. I also stand by my slippery slope straw man, because history has already shown that this type of expansion of civilian liability and law enforcement powers doesn't have an end goal. There is no "enough."
I'll be surprised if this sticks, though FedEx may settle out of court. FedEx employees visit e-commerce companies all the time but not to inspect product. They are there to sell shipping and service the shipping computers. Is a FedEx salesperson or computer serviceperson supposed to be an expert on drug identification? Does that person really know that the stuff in those pill bottles is a controlled substance?
Is it possible that perhaps the FedEx employees may have seen these so called "pill bottles" and were either told 1) they're legal supplements/medications or 2) had no clue what they were when they were observing the operation since they were only interested in the shipping logistics?
With just a cursory glance, it seems that it was written up by an overzealous federal prosecutor who wants to make his/her career's achievement busting a big company like FedEx as part of a massive drug ring with conflated charges.
