Comment by ryanmercer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryanmercer | Hacker News Reader

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Customs will know if Huawei is the shipper or importer of record, if it was on the docs. However "John Smith" could walk down to FedEx/UPS/DHL and go "I have this box of phones I'd like to ship, as John Smith" and hand a box full of Huawei phones across the desk.

The origin station goes "ok" and the provided documents get scanned in (commercial invoice, waybill). The packages goes along its way. If it is headed to the United States those documents then get transmitted to an office somewhere and someone reviews them and files entry on the shipment with the port it is expected to land in.

Say it's John Smith to Not Huawei Inc and it's 12 phones.

So Customs would get that it's John Smith and such and such street, shipping to Not Huawei Inc at such and such street. They'd then get the tariff number of 8517120050 for cellphones, that the quantity is 12, the country of origin on the docs and the value of the shipment.

What Customs won't see, unless they decide to manually review the commercial invoice themselves, is that the phones were manufactured by Huawei. What Customs and the carrier doen't realize is that "John Smith" is actually "Huawei Employee at Huawei, shipping for Huawei from Huawei to Huawei" because the commercial invoice says John smith to Not Huawei Inc which happens to be a DBA for Huawei (although Customs could catch this via the EIN).

A lot of customs clearance is "If it's written on the commercial invoice, it must be true" unless Customs flags something for manual inspection and decides to question it themselves. And the volume of packages entering the United States is such that it is just impossible to go over even 20% of shipments with a fine-toothed comb. You'd need to drastically increase the number of ports, the size of the ports, probably increase the number of CBP employees doing the job an order of magnitude and you'd still end up slowing down how fast freight is getting moved.

We live in a world where stuff gets on a plane in China and 12 hours later is clearing Customs and getting on a truck to head to it's final sort facility or onto a truck to be delivered to the importer. If you wanted to manually inspect every shipment you'd need an insane amount of warehouse space and something might get released a week or two after landing at the port of entry.

I work with a company that imports and exports physical products to the U.S. regularly.

Yes, you could probably get away shipping a dozen phones a few times. But they will catch it eventually. They do actually inspect paperwork and sometimes contents.

And if they find out you've lied on the paperwork, you've earned yourself a shit list that's going to extend to any travel you do to/from the U.S. for life, on top of penalties and possibly arrest warrants.

They don't mess around.

I should add: CBP shares offices at the border with the couriers. They're literally down the hall from each other. They're inspecting packages crossing the border all day long, but it's a random sampling, so whether it's your day or not is a matter of luck. They also have mobile x Ray trucks that scan full semi trailers.

> you've earned yourself a shit list

Does this extend up and down the tree? The issue is not so much that John Smith needs to get randomly selected at every airport he goes to for the rest of his life.

The issue is that the business he worked for also hired Jane Doe who is doing the same thing - they'd need to trace the responsibility up to his employer/contracting company and back down to their other employees and contractors.

Businesses seem surprisingly good at providing scapegoats and deniability in situations like this, especially compared to our government's tendency to blame the individual.

As far as I'm aware, this applies to the person filing the documents. If a person does this on behalf of a company without referencing the company, he's personally liable. If the company is listed on the paperwork, they'd be flagged.

There's a big difference between sending something personally at the post office, and registering as an exporter/importer. If you're registered, you use your broker account number.

Can the company have thousands of employees attempt to send packages personally? Sure. But if discovered, the company would itself be shitlisted, with probably no way to undo it. The executives and any company that helped facilitate the fraud would be investigated.

I can't speak to whether the CBP maintains employment data or affiliations, but my guess would be yes. I'm sure they have back-office integrations with the NSA.

Misrepresenting information is lying under oath to a government agent. Even honest to God mistakes will get you fined, and flag you for closer inspection in the future.

As a non US citizen, the CBP is scary. I've been to exporter training sessions put on by them jointly with brokers and lawyers. I can't stress how seriously they take this, and how far their influence reaches. Even as a US citizen, I'd find them scary.

it wouldn't be hard to create another company to do this either.

Yes, it would. The application process is a bitch, and fairly invasive. This isn't something you can churn and burn.

If they wanted a legal entity with legal protection and create a brand new company sure.

You can go buy shelf companies (companies that have been previously created and are presently unused) online all day long and effectively take instant delivery however.

And if they just wanted to be blackhat about it, you can go to the IRS website and generate an EIN (tax ID for companies) in a few clicks without showing any identification or documentation and then you just need a place to receive packages or have the packages held for pickup at the carrier.

You can also just go hire random people to accept delivery or pickup your packages. Those dealing in AAS (steroids), recreational drugs, carded merchandise etc do this regularly.

Crime exists because, more often than not, it's painfully easy.

Shelf companies is an interesting approach I hadn't considered.

I wouldn't call anything you described easy, but I'm not a nation state trying to illegal smuggle banned goods. I disagree that you can churn and burn these, but you've made a good point.

>They do actually inspect paperwork and sometimes contents.

I'm well aware, this has been my livelihood for 13 years. That doesn't change the fact that Customs inspects a fraction of shipments and that for a considerable chunk of shipments a human being is never even involved on Customs end, just a computer.

> They also have mobile x Ray trucks that scan full semi trailers.

Mobile x-ray doesn't magically reveal the manufacturer of a given product though, or tap into the akashic record and verify the given country of origin, it goes "yup, there doesn't appear to be missiles, people or hidden compartments in that container".

>And if they find out you've lied on the paperwork, you've earned yourself a shit list that's going to extend to any travel you do to/from the U.S. for life, on top of penalties and possibly arrest warrants.

Do you really think random people in China are concerned about this? Also the paperwork used for Customs clearance, the vast majority of the time, is supplied by the shipper and the importer of record is only contacted if something is missing or clarification is needed by the broker.

Have you ever ordered something form eBay or AliExpress that shipped from China? The Customs declarations NEVER have accurate information on them, they consistently flat out lie about the contents, value, will often indicate gift or not sold, they'll even lie about the country of origin frequently. While these items are often usually a few bucks and are often sectionable anyway, you can bet this happens are formal shipments too without carriers and/or brokers knowing and Customs probably only catches this a small fraction of the time.

Until we get AGI and much better imaging equipment OR Customs increases the number of people doing inspection at least one order of magnitude, this will remain true. The volume is simply too high to catch even half of the funny business/lies/contraband.

This is also one of the countless reasons I lose sleep at night, we are far far far far far too dependent on be able to order this piece from that country, that piece from this country, those widgets from 2 other countries, and having everything show up at our home/place of business 1-3 days later to replace something that broke. All it takes is a natural disaster, a war, a trade war, and BAM.

This trade war with China for example had companies like Regal Beloit scrambling to move their manufacturing to Mexico, then it was announced we'd be starting a trade war with Mexico and these companies began to panic even more, fortunately that one seems to have been resolved.

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