What to do about a malicious prank

October 18, 2008 7:23 AM

I am receiving unsolicited magazine subscriptions along with billing statements. I have called the magazine offices to cancel the subscriptions. I am being told they have the subscription request card from me with my signature. I have requested copies of these cards from the magazine companies to see if I can discern who is responsible. Sending them to me was ok but now they have added my wife to the game and I am no longer amused. If by chance I am able to identify the culprit, would anyone know if there is a legal recourse I could pursue to encourage them to stop?
posted by Shalerman to grab bag (6 comments total)

If you end up paying up, there's small claims court.

You could maybe have them charged with some kind of harassment or something? Since this involves the postal service (a federal agency) they could get in Big Trouble, potentially. I don't think it would qualify as mail fraud, since the prankster is not actually fraudulently requesting money from you, they're just impersonating you to get you to pay someone else unrelated. Anyway, I'd imagine there is some law somewhere this person has broken by impersonating you so, and it likely falls under federal jurisdiction. I'd try calling the Postal Inspection Service if you want to take whoever it was down hard. You may not want to though. Would you want a friend who just had a very big lapse in judgement to spend time in federal prison? On the other hand, although I am not a lawyer, it seems likely that they may get some deal not involving jail time, since it's a relatively minor offense even though it's federal.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 7:59 AM on October 18, 2008

I would recommend just letting them run the course. In college I started receiving magazines (a lot) at my house, all addressed to me, made up names or just a few digits instead of a name. Clearly it was some friends just signing me up for whatever they thought would annoy me. I also got almost a year of free newspaper subscription from someone. I never ordered it, it just kept getting delivered and no request for payment ever appeared. It just stopped one day. If you are complaining about this to friends or family, stop. Someone could well be having a heck of a laugh at your expense. I am not a lawyer but none of the subscription cards I've seen come even close to a legal contract, I just looked at four in my apartment and not one even has a signature line.

The companies are willing to mail these out for several months because they know some person will find them interesting and start paying. After a few months the magazines will stop coming, a few months after that the billing requests will stop. Just trash them. For magazines with this business model, it's nothing new. You can get a subscription to almost any major magazine for free or a couple of bucks a year if you look hard enough. They make cash on advertisers, who in turn want as many issues sent out as possible.
posted by Science! at 8:00 AM on October 18, 2008

File a USPS form 1500 alleging the junk mail is obscene.


"Pursuant to federal law (Title 39 USC § 3008), a postal addressee who receives an unsolicited (or solicited) advertisement offering for sale matter that, in the addressee’s sole discretion, is “erotically arousing or sexually provocative,” may, by completing PS Form 1500, obtain a Prohibitory Order from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) directing the mailer to refrain from making further mailings to that addressee.


While the law, the form and the USPS instructions for using the form were originally intended for sexually explicit and provocative mail, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision - Rowan vs. U.S. Post Office Department, 397 U.S. 728 (1970) - ruled that the law under Title 39 USC § 4009 (now 39 USC § 3008) includes all unwanted commercial mail. Thus, PS Form 1500 is no longer used just for sexually explicit or provocative mail - although it still reads as such."
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:17 AM on October 18, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

I would post this question to Consumerist (and their forums) to get more information. This seems to be a tactic employed more and more frequently by magazine companies. Some pertinent info from their site: 1 2 3
posted by greenland at 10:45 AM on October 18, 2008

I know this is common practice to send a few issues of a mag & then send a bill to a company. the idea is that mags go to whoever reads them & the bill goes to accounts payable (who's job it is to "pay bills") In a larger operation this can slip by checks & balances & get paid. it is a old school phishing scam. maybe they have expanded to private homes. or someone is just messing with you. write return to sender on them & let your post person deal with it.
posted by patnok at 2:52 PM on October 18, 2008

Have you bought any tickets on Ticketmaster lately?

Myself and a few of my friends have all ended up with magazine subscriptions initiated by them.
posted by o0dano0o at 7:51 PM on October 18, 2008