A British Columbian man who allegedly falsified prepaid mailing labels is being sued by Canada Post for nearly half a million dollars in lost revenue.
“Canada Post is entitled to the return of the evaded postage, or items and proceeds traceable to it which were acquired through business transactions using the manipulated return labels,” reads the Crown corporation’s notice of civil claim.
Jackson Lam has been accused of manipulating more than 11,000 prepaid return labels provided by online companies to mail out his energy drinks to customers, according to Canada Post’s filing.
Filed in B.C.’s Supreme Court, the lawsuit claims that Lam “operated an energy drink business under the moniker Prime Hydration Co.” via a now-defunct website called primehydrationco.ca.
The address for Prime Hydration Co. was located at a UPS Store in Burnaby, B.C.
According to Canada Post, Lam’s illicit scheme involved him requesting return labels from companies like Bell Canada, Shaw Communications, Cogeco, Eastlink and others online which he would then alter for his own purposes.
Once manipulated, parcels containing his energy drink product could be mailed out to customers without cost to his business using the addresses they had provided to him via his website, instead of unwanted merchandise being returned to those companies.
According to the claim, Lam obtained 11,328 of these labels between August 2022 and April 2023.
It wasn’t until after Canada Post began receiving complaints from Bell Canada last year regarding labels issued in its name for purported returns that did not arrive.
Generally, the Crown corporation is paid for shipping costs following any return label being scanned for delivery.
However, Canada Post is still not aware of the exact details of how Lam was able to carry out his scheme.
“Full particulars of the means used by the defendant to manipulate the return labels are within the exclusive knowledge of the defendant,” reads the lawsuit.
Canada Post claims that it intercepted 13 parcels last April that all bore return labels which appeared to belong to Shaw Communications when scanned, however, they were ultimately bound for Prime Hydration Co. customers.
The case is also currently under investigation by the RCMP, which calculated, using data provided by Canada Post, that Lam’s scam totalled $449,439.71 in allegedly stolen or diverted shipping costs.
Canada Post is seeking the lost revenue, investigation costs and any other losses or expenses incurred in its lawsuit, as well as punitive and aggravated damages.
The lawsuit claims that he “knowingly and falsely represented himself as a legitimate customer of the merchants,” using the falsified labels to deceive Canada Post into delivering his parcels.
True North was unable to contact Lam for comment and none of the allegations have been proven in court.
