The $2 side hustle that allegedly cost the US Postal Service $126 million

Every side hustle needs a pitch. According to U.S. prosecutors, Faheem Akram’s was simple: $2 per shipping label, any package, any weight, any destination, reports the New York Post.

The business model

Akram, 33, of Khanewal in Pakistan’s Punjab province, allegedly ran LabelsBank.com. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida says the site sold more than 5.1 million counterfeit postage labels to over 5,200 customers. The labels let buyers ship at far below legitimate postal rates. If every label went for the typical $2, that would be roughly $10 million in sales, by my own arithmetic.

The catch

Prosecutors put the Postal Service’s losses at more than $126 million. That is lost revenue and shipping costs, not what the website earned.

Akram was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida, according to a Sept. 28 statement from prosecutors. Pakistani authorities, acting on intelligence, arrested him Tuesday after a weekslong search involving raids across several parts of the country, said Atif Ameer, a senior official at the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency.

The books

Ameer said investigators found the site ran from August 2023 through September 2026, using 16 bank accounts. They belonged to Akram, his brother, wife, sister and aunt.