Protecting Yourself from Scams: The South Loop BBQ Sauce Incident Explained

CHICAGO (WLS) — It’s a mystery landing on porches across the country: unwanted boxes piling up for weeks, or even months.

It may look like a shipping mistake or a strange promotion, but experts say this is a scam carried out by international businesses.

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Nicole Nassif says unwanted Walmart boxes kept showing up at her doorstep.

“I came home one day and there was a box at my front door that was addressed to my restaurant at my home address,” Nassif said.

Nassif opened the box to find two bottles of barbeque sauce inside. As a restaurant owner, she wondered if it was a promotion.

“But then more boxes started arriving, each containing two bottles of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce. I was unsure how to handle it, so I began reaching out to the senders listed on the return labels,” shared Nassif.

The shipments were not from the real Sweet Baby Ray’s in the Chicago area, but from an international reseller. One box after another kept coming.

“There was a lot of confusion,” Nassif said.

Nassif realized that her eatery, Imee’s Mediterranean Kitchen, located in the South Loop, was being falsely represented on Walmart Marketplace. Her residence was falsely used as the “return address.”

Eli Clemens from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation explains that foreign businesses are using U.S. addresses as a tactic to bypass regulations for international sellers. They aim to avoid the cost of prepaid international return labels and are not interested in retrieving their products.

“Unfortunately, I think U.S. consumers are just going to be the victims in this, and there’s not a lot of options for recourse,” Clemens said.

Nassif says it took several weeks, dozens of emails and follow-up calls to get Walmart to remove her address as that “return address.”

“It was a full-time job. I spent 60 hours, at least,” Nassif said.

Walmart informed ABC7, “The integrity of our Marketplace is paramount, and we employ various verification processes and ongoing surveillance to ensure only legitimate sellers operate on our platform. We do not tolerate inaccuracies and promptly remove any noncompliant listings.”

Nassif reached out to our San Francisco affiliate after they ran a similar story in the Bay Area. In that case, a woman received Amazon packages she didn’t order for over a year. Amazon expressed its apologies and assisted her in resolving the matter.

Nassif says she is thankful that her boxes of barbecue sauce have stopped stacking up.

“Honestly, it was nuts. I was like, ‘What in the hay is going on?'” Nassif said.

So, how can you protect yourself?

Experts advise that while challenging, utilizing data deletion services can help minimize your online presence. If you encounter a similar issue, thoroughly document the situation and reach out to the platform for assistance.