Fake customs release fee scam — package/parcel held/seized at customs/border + pay customs duty/clearance fee or package destroyed/confiscated
fake-customs-release-fee-package-scam
What this tier means
High-confidence threat indicator — phishing, impersonation, BEC, or scam pattern. Strong contributor to the trash decision.
How Gorganizer detects this
Email impersonating a customs agency (US Customs and Border Protection, HM Customs and Excise, or similar) claiming the recipient's package or international shipment has been "held," "seized," or "detained" at the border and demanding payment of a customs duty, import duty, clearance fee, or storage fee to release it — with a deadline threat that the package will be "destroyed," "confiscated," or "returned to sender" if unpaid. Real customs notices arrive by postal mail (never cold email), are tied to actual shipments the recipient ordered, and are processed through licensed brokers or carrier websites. FTC 2024: delivery and customs impersonation scams caused $330M in losses; SMS and email variants spiked 400% during post-pandemic shipping backlogs. Scammers also use this pretext to harvest passport numbers and SSNs under the guise of "identity verification for customs clearance."
False-positive guard
Every signal in Gorganizer feeds a multi-module score — never a sole verdict. This is a threat-tier signal — it adds a strong contribution to the trash score. The full pipeline still requires convergence across multiple modules + a margin over the safety floor before deletion happens, and Gmail's trash (30-day recovery) is always used — never permanent delete.
About the scoring engine
Gorganizer's scoring engine emits over 1,800 signals across six modules — headers, sender, subject, body, attachments, and structural metadata. Every email is scored by every module independently; the final verdict requires multiple modules to agree and the trash score to beat the safety floor by a margin.
Sacred safety guards — never delete starred emails, replies, calendar invites, receipts/invoices, or attachments — apply unconditionally regardless of any signal.
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