International Scam Sends Loads of BBQ Sauce to a Chicago Woman, and it Could Happen to You!

In our modern world, it takes just a click to purchase items online. Sellers like eBay, Amazon, Walmart, and many others are doing some seriously large amounts of business online. Unfortunately, that also means that we as consumers are sharing a whole lot of information, even if only for a second, online as well. That's how you could end up with an abundance of BBQ sauce on your porch, that seems to have no end in sight. Let me break it down. I'll tell you how this scam works and how to avoid similar issues as this lady in Chicago.

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It started innocently enough, according to ABC 7 Chicago. One day, Nicole Nassif, a restaurant owner in Chicago’s South Loop, came home to find a Walmart box waiting on her doorstep. Inside? Two bottles of Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce (one of my favorite brands). At first, she thought it might be a quirky promotion for her Mediterranean restaurant, but the boxes didn’t stop. Day after day, more boxes arrived, always with the same two bottles of BBQ sauce. Before long, her porch looked more like a warehouse.

When she dug deeper, the truth was stranger than fiction. It usually is. Scammers had impersonated her restaurant on Walmart Marketplace, using her home address as the “return address.” That meant any returned items from unsuspecting buyers across the country were shipped back to her home address instead. And because these shady internet sellers were overseas, they had no interest in paying for those costly international returns. Yup, they didn't care about getting the product back as long as they didn't have to pay the shipping fees.

This type of scheme is called a “brushing scam,” and it’s been popping up across Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Victims never ordered the items, but they’re stuck with the confusion and the clutter when the packages arrive. I guess if you like free stuff, you should "sign-up" for this scam. Who knows what you'll get!

So, what can you do if you're the victim of "brushing"?

• Document it. Take pictures of the labels and contents.
• Contact the platform. Whether it’s Amazon or Walmart, report the misuse of your address until they resolve it.
• Stay alert. Check your credit and accounts to be sure nothing else is going on.
• Limit your online footprint. Remove personal addresses from directories whenever possible.

If mystery boxes show up on your doorstep in Chicago, Des Moines, or Milwaukee, don’t assume it’s free stuff. It could be a scammer halfway across the globe, using your address as a dumping ground for their online hustle. Here's the bad news: you really can't do anything about it until the boxes start to arrive. Good luck; hopefully, what comes to your doorstep is something nice.