“Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into US territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this?
Customs can’t actually screen everything coming in. I’m oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what’s coming in, the rest of it’s just waived through…”
-callmeraylo
I can personally vouch for the broker making this claim because I know first hand that if you are importing small items into the USA for personal use, your stuff has to be flagged by a CPB agent who wants to build a case against you from an insider tip.
Only high profile importers or large gray area container loads ever see eyes on the documents and then screeners rely on instinct to only flag what might be knock-off shipments or suspected large quantities of drugs.
My case was developed as a personal vendetta from a politician with whom I had exposed for criminal activity, and I was flagged for investigation due to his criminal conviction. The customs agent then imported over a quarter million in fake drugs and claimed I was a co-conspirator in a drug trafficking ring, all because I bought some viagra for personal use from a non-USA source to save less than $100 for a few pills. I had to pay restitution to ELI LILLY and PFIZER fo their loss of profit in the amount that the border patrol agent imported. The evidence was photographs of a drug bust from some other on file customs seizure, with no actual drugs involved, and since I was barely scraping by and not a big-time dealer with connections and cash to pay an attorney, I moved the case closer to home which meant I had to plead guilty of the crime. We just had a child, so I was in no financial position to properly fight the charges. Headlines read: "
Missouri Man Charged With Counterfeit Viagra And Cialis" true story
I can personally vouch for the broker making this claim because I know first hand that if you are importing small items into the USA for personal use, your stuff has to be flagged by a CPB agent who wants to build a case against you from an insider tip.
Only high profile importers or large gray area container loads ever see eyes on the documents and then screeners rely on instinct to only flag what might be knock-off shipments or suspected large quantities of drugs.
My case was developed as a personal vendetta from a politician with whom I had exposed for criminal activity, and I was flagged for investigation due to his criminal conviction. The customs agent then imported over a quarter million in fake drugs and claimed I was a co-conspirator in a drug trafficking ring, all because I bought some viagra for personal use from a non-USA source to save less than $100 for a few pills. I had to pay restitution to ELI LILLY and PFIZER fo their loss of profit in the amount that the border patrol agent imported. The evidence was photographs of a drug bust from some other on file customs seizure, with no actual drugs involved, and since I was barely scraping by and not a big-time dealer with connections and cash to pay an attorney, I moved the case closer to home which meant I had to plead guilty of the crime. We just had a child, so I was in no financial position to properly fight the charges. Headlines read: "
Missouri Man Charged With Counterfeit Viagra And Cialis" true story