A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida formally charged Faheem Akram, a 33-year-old Pakistani national, with allegedly operating an illegal website that purportedly sold over five million counterfeit postage labels.
The website is estimated to have caused losses exceeding 126 million dollars to the United States Postal Service (USPS), according to the statement from the Department of Justice released this Monday.
The scheme: simple, cheap, and mass-produced
According to the accusation, Akram, originally from Khanewal, Pakistan, operated labelsBank.com, an unlicensed platform that offered shipping labels for a flat fee of about two dollars per unit, regardless of the weight, size, or destination of the package.
According to the authorities, the labels included barcodes, tracking numbers, and sender and recipient information that made them appear legitimate, which would have allowed the packages to enter the postal system without the USPS receiving the corresponding payment.
According to the accusation, more than 5,200 people used the site to purchase the tags, with a total of over 5.1 million units sold.
The federal prosecutor Jason A. Reding Quiñones described the mechanism in the official statement.
"The purported scheme was simple yet vast: selling counterfeit postage labels online at fixed and reduced prices, starting from just two dollars per label, regardless of the weight, size, or destination of a package, which allowed customers to bypass the legitimate charges of the Postal Service," he stated.
The damage: beyond the USPS
The authorities maintain that the alleged fraud would not only have harmed the Postal Service but also the buyers of the labels themselves.
Quiñones also warned about the risks that this type of scheme can pose for those who purchase fraudulent labels, as they may not function correctly and could result in the loss of money or issues with package delivery.
The investigation and the closure of the site
The United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), Miami Division, conducted the investigation.
In coordination with the formal charges, the authorities obtained a court order to seize the domain and shut down the site.
Bladismir Rojo, inspector in charge of the Miami Division of USPIS, stated in the official announcement: "Our reach goes beyond our borders. The transnational criminal organizations that defraud the Postal Service and target consumers in the United States by promoting false postage will be found and brought to justice."
The charges and the possible penalties
Akram faces 10 federal charges: one for conspiracy to defraud the United States and manufacture and sell counterfeit postage stamps, five for manufacturing and selling counterfeit labels, and four for electronic fraud.
If found guilty, he could face up to five years in prison for the charges of conspiracy and counterfeit labels, and up to 20 years for each of the four counts of electronic fraud.
The assistant prosecutors Jon Juenger and Jacqueline DerOvanesian are handling the indictment; the assistant prosecutor Nicole Grosnoff is in charge of asset forfeiture.
The case is being processed under number 26-cr-60249 in the District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The accusation is merely an allegation. Akram is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
A growing problem for postal mail
Between October 2024 and September 2025, the USPIS seized 16.2 million dollars in counterfeit stamps and issued 358 voluntary cessation orders as part of a broader campaign against this type of fraud.
A comparable precedent occurred in California, where Lijuan "Angela" Chen pleaded guilty to a similar scheme that resulted in over $150 million in losses for the USPS, with more than 34 million packages sent between 2020 and 2023. She was subsequently sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison.
Authorities warn against the purchase or conscious use of counterfeit postage stamps. Mail with forged postage may be treated as abandoned by USPS, resulting in the loss of both the package and the money paid.
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