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I know this one. They make such phantom sales to increase their standing on the platform (ebay, Aliexpress). The platforms do not know it, they put people to make those fake sales so randoms in US and Europe.

In most cases they send hairpins and such stuff, but in this case it happened to be seeds.

If the government response is so heavy handed on this stupid issue (sellers trying to trick the platform), imagine how silly other investigations could be.

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Considering that receiving "unsolicited" seeds from just about anywhere else has exactly the same risk and is entirely legal, this seems to me to be little more than anti-China fearmongering. I've been asking my local state reps to stop the sale of Callery Pear trees (which are invasive and damaging) but they have ignored me for years because the nursereys make a lot of money from them and lobby to keep them legal. Perhaps if I started pointing out that the trees are Chinese/Vietnamese in origin I might get somewhere now.

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