Mass. mom sues FedEx for giving suspected drug dealers her address

CBS ^ | 03/01/2013

[Responsibility2nd]

A Massachusetts woman is suing FedEx claiming the company put her safety at risk and violated her privacy, CBS Boston reports.

A package containing several pounds of marijuana mistakenly arrived at the doorstep of Maryangela Tobin, a package she thought was a birthday present for her daughter.

"There were candles, pixie sticks and peppermint, and something we thought was potpourri," she said.

But the vacuum packed bags beneath were narcotics and Plymouth police called the company to flag the package saying the recipient could be a risk. But an hour later, Tobin says a man was knocking at her front door looking for the package, with two other men sitting in a vehicle in her driveway. She says FedEx gave away her address, and led the suspected dealers to her house.

[Responsibility2nd]

This woman is SOL.

[1rudeboy]

Help me out here. Are we to assume FedEx handed out her address because the drug dealers didn’t know where they sent the package?

[Abathar]

She’ll be fine. She just has to blast her shotgun in the air a couple of times and everything will be rosy.

[LibWhacker]

The way I’m interpreting it, FedEx delivered it to the wrong address. Then when the drug dealers called them up demanding to know where their package was, FedEx told ‘em.

[Valpal1]

Did Fed Ex mis-deliver the package to the wrong address and then tell the addressee where the driver left the package?

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

“She’ll be fine. She just has to blast her shotgun in the air a couple of times and everything will be rosy.”

Noooooo, through the door!

[GeronL]

definitely not a birthday gift for the daughter

[henkster]

The drug dealers knew where they sent the package. It was a deliberate attempt to get around package interdiction programs run by law enforcement. Law enforcement will run dogs through Fed Ex, USPS and UPS shipping hubs and will pull packages that fit various profiles. Those packages are then put under the dog’s nose, and if there is an alert, they get a search warrant for the package. If narcotics are found, then a transmitter triggered by opening the package is enclosed, and the package resealed. The package is then delivered in a “controlled delivery” by law enforcement officers, who are in possession of an “anticipatory search warrant” that allows them to make entry if the transmitter indicates the package is opened.

In this case, the drug traffickers were trying to defeat that process with several layers of protection, the first being all the scented candles, potpourri and the like. If there was a “controlled delivery” by law enforcement, it would be on the home of this poor innocent woman, not the intended recipient. The idea was that the drug traffickers would be at the home waiting for the delivery, and if there were no unmarked police vans around, they would go get the package with some veiled threats involved.

This woman is lucky she didn’t get a visit by the SWAT team.

[henkster]

I doubt the traffickers called Fed Ex. The traffickers shipped it and had the parcel tracking #. They were monitoring the shipment on the Fed Ex website, and knowing when it was due to be delivered, they were in the neighborhood waiting. They were also running counter-surveillance to make sure the police were also not in the area waiting.

I don’t think she has a case against Fed Ex. She was an innocent victim of drug gangs who are playing the system.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

I don’t know. I had a similar thing happen to me with a pair of shoes from Zappos. They were supposed to be delivered to my son at college, but they never got there. When I tracked them, it said they went to the right street address but the wrong town. Zappos started a trace with UPS, and UPS eventually called me and told me where they’d been delivered. In this case, it was his mom’s house (they looked up his name and found it associated with her address), but they didn’t know that before they told me.

[Eagles6]

Yeah, they would have shot her dogs.

[henkster]

Having prosecuted several of these cases over the years, I strongly suspect it was not an innocent mistake by the sender of the package, Fed Ex did not make a shipping mistake, nor did they have to call Fed Ex. One would wonder whether Fed Ex would even have a record of the call if one were made, and I really doubt the guys in the driveway will be “available” as witnesses for her.

[JustSayNoToNannies]

She was an innocent victim of drug gangs who are playing the system.

And, at one remove, of the War on Drugs that incentivizes such system-playing - nobody gets threatened by rumrunners seeking their stealthily-shipped hooch, because there's no incentive to stealthily ship hooch.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

A Massachusetts woman is suing FedEx claiming the company put her safety at risk and violated her privacy, CBS Boston reports.

So the news media puts her face and name on tv and lets everyone know she is from plymouth just in case the drug dealers missed something. But FedEx is left holding the bag. Well, they do have too much money.

[Ingtar]

She may be mostly innocent. However, if it was an incorrect address as she claimed, why did she open it? I’m sure the name would have been incorrect in that case as well. I do know the shipper can get some information about where a package is delivered with the proper information for verification, but I don’t see any shipper fault here from the information we have.

[Albion Wilde]

This woman is lucky she didn’t get a visit by the SWAT team.

Who would have shot her dogs and tied up and terrorized her elderly mother. This happened in Maryland to the mayor of one of our towns, whose front step was used in this way for a drug drop. The family were completely traumatized. And, of course, the taxpayer paid the damages.

"The deputies opened fire and executed our dogs the very second they broke down our front door," Calvo, 37, said at a news conference on his front lawn Thursday. "We were harmed by the very people who took an oath to protect us."

[bgill]

This woman is lucky she didn’t get a visit by the SWAT team.

Just wait until the kiddies in the WH hears of this and decides to set up some of their enemies with this scam.

[JustSayNoToNannies]

Attorneys for Prince George's County on Monday settled a lawsuit brought by Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo that accused deputies from a county sheriff's SWAT unit of storming into his home without a proper warrant the day they shot his family's two dogs and held him at gunpoint.

He's lucky he was a mayor - I don't think us little people are even allowed to sue the police.

[zipper]

Great, by that perverse logic, let’s legalize terrorism, so we can end the “war on terror”.

And on another level how does your notion of ending the war on drugs by joining the enemy impact state’s rights? Does the federal government have the power to decide illegal drugs are suddenly legal, constraining every state from the power to enforce their own drug laws against drug contraband shipped to their state through interstate commerce?

Of course not. The states must have consent. The federal government is Big Brother, but fortunately the federal government is constrained by the Constitution. If the feds were to suddenly legalize pot (as an example) then pot shipments from Washington state to Texas would still not be legal, unless Texas legalized it too, in addition to other considerations. Each state transited by the dope shipments have a say.

[Ken H]

She may be mostly innocent.

What do you mean by "mostly" innocent?

However, if it was an incorrect address as she claimed, why did she open it?

Where did she claim it was an incorrect address?