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THE FAKE IDS, PART ONE
July 10, 2013, was a particularly windy day at San Francisco International Airport. Powerful
gusts of air rattled planes as they came in over the bay. On some passenger flights the luggage in
the hold was jostled around, and on the mail carrier planes, packages and envelopes were shuffled to
and fro. But when a Canadian mail flight came in for landing, the wind gusts seemed to stop for a
brief moment and the wheels touched down smoothly on the tarmac.
The plane came to a stop and the cardboard boxes in the hull, filled with envelopes, made their
way to the Customs Mail Center at SFO. Inspectors unloaded the boxes one by one and unloaded their
contents onto different conveyor belts, all destined for small towns or big cities across the United
States.
The mail handler on duty that day unpacked one of the boxes, reaching for a pile of square
envelopes that had remained close together throughout the journey from Canada. Individually each of
those square envelopes was not suspect, but together, as a group, something wasn’t right about them.
What stood out to the mail handler was that the envelopes were exactly the same shape and size,
and the handwriting on their fronts was definitively the same, a jagged scribble that had been hastily
carved into the labels. But, curiously, the return addresses and names on the envelopes were all
slightly and strangely different.
One was sent from a “Cole Harris” who lived in Vancouver. Another was sent from “Arnold
Harris” at a different address in Vancouver. And a third was from “Burt Harris” in still another
corner of Vancouver. Three Harrises, all from different areas of Vancouver, all with the same
handwriting on the same size envelopes was not only strange; it was suspect. To top off this curiosity,
the letters were all addressed to different people in America, including one being sent to an “Andrew
Ford,” who lived at 2260 Fifteenth Avenue, right there in San Francisco.
The mail handler grabbed a seizure form, filled out the appropriate boxes, and then sliced open
the envelopes to see what was inside.
• • •
Ross had been working around the clock on the site, trying to manage all of the new issues that kept
arising, some from disgruntled customers, others related to employees who still weren’t working to
their full potential, hackers, dealers who were being arrested by the Feds, and packages that were
being seized or stolen somewhere along their routes. He was also gathering anti–law enforcement
intelligence from someone called Kevin, who told him that the Feds were starting to arrest some of
the biggest vendors on the site.
Luckily, Ross was safe from all of this chaos, hiding out as Josh in his sublet near the Outer
Sunset and able to work around the clock without any questions from his roommates. (Though he did