Thomas Dement of Wake Forest, North Carolina, is no stranger to online shopping deliveries.
But recently, he’s been inundated with packages that he didn’t order — and some don’t even have his name on them.
He has counted more than 20 of the odd deliveries so far — small padded envelopes delivered by the U.S. Postal Service and filled with things no one would buy on purpose: handfuls of gravel, scraps of paper, even a blank greeting card that simply read “Best Wishes.”
When Dement tried writing “return to sender” and dropping them back in the outgoing mail, the stream didn’t slow.
“It just seems like we’re in a loop where constantly things are being sent to us,” he told local reporters, wondering if his address “is out on the dark web somewhere.”
After posting photos in a neighborhood social media group, Dement learned he wasn’t alone; several neighbors said they’d received similar mystery mail. Commenters pointed him to what cyber‑fraud experts call a brushing scam.
