Currency Fraud

ALBANY, N.Y. - Mail workers are associated with crime, crimes of passion or frustration that have entered the lexicon as "going postal." The felonies committed when "going postal" can be myriad, but I'm not sure they are assumed to include money laundering.

My life of crime began yesterday at the Albany regional post office, which processes packages in the area. I came here since I needed my parcel to arrive in Beijing as soon as possible. If it doesn’t arrive by Tuesday, I might not get into language school.

I waited in a lengthy line, filled with people breaking up their afternoon commute to send out holiday thank you notes. At the designated “Next!” I went to the open counter and spread out the contents of my shoulder bag: the two-page application for Beijing Normal University, an express mailing envelope, a customs form and 450 Chinese Renminbi. I asked the cashier if I'd completed the form correctly.

"You can't send money to China," he said.

"What do you mean?"

He turned a computer screen to the left so I could see it. It showed a page on the company's internal server, with a list of banned items sent to China. Currency was at the top of the list.

"What I am supposed do to?" I said, voice rising. "I went through considerable machinations to get this money. This is what the university wanted. I need to send it to Beijing."

The man lowered his voice. There’s another way, he said. As a federal employee, he couldn’t accept the package because he saw the money. But if hypothetically someone came into the post office with a package to China already closed, he wouldn't open it. And if they placed "University Documents" on the package, he wouldn't ask what was inside. It would just be sent, fast post.

Why he’d do it? The man offered one possible explanation: he'd been to China. He understood the mindless regulation and confusion in the country.

As I walked away from the counter, the man continued to offer words of advice.

"Take food! It's nothing like what we have here! Completely different!"

I don't want to convict myself in print, but the next day I mailed the package. I took the contents of the envelope up to the cashier sealed.