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Shipping by UPS: In the Wrong Hands

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Shipping by UPS: In the Wrong Hands

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ― When Leila Radan's dental bills threatened to swap her family's finances, she made a tough decision: her wedding rings were worth more than $10,000, so she put them up for sale on Craig's List.

"I wanted to keep my rings," explained Leila. "But it would be a help to my family to have this money, instead of rings on my finger."

Her ad got a quick response from a man in League City, Texas. He suggested she ship the rings by UPS, and he'd pay at the other end, by handing over a cashier's check to the UPS driver. But Leila and her husband Sean were skeptical.

Sean remembered, "I said, 'How are UPS going to make sure that these checks are real?"

So they called UPS.

"We couldn't have been more to the point that we wanted to know if these checks are fraudulent, if we're okay," said Sean.

Leila chimed in, "And what they kept saying is, no, no, no, money orders and cashiers checks are 100% safe and guaranteed."

Leila says she got the same assurance from a UPS store in San Francisco where she went to make the shipment. She paid $226 for shipping and special package insurance with a UPS promise: "You're covered no matter what," Leila remembered. "We thought we had a safety net! We thought, 'Hey, if this thing falls through, this insurance is going to pick us up and we're going to be fine!'"

But things weren't fine. The buyer in Texas turned out to be a con man. The cashier's checks turned out to be fake. But Leila figured, at least she'd bought that UPS insurance.

"Thank goodness I bought insurance. I'm covered I'm covered I'm covered." Or so Leila thought.

Then came the bad news from UPS: small letters on the back of the shipping receipt say UPS does not cover for fraud.

"No one reads the small writing," Leila said. "It's a bunch of small writing!"

Instead, UPS only guarantees a package will arrive safely.

"All (UPS) kept saying is, 'No, we are not liable. We're only liable for the loss of the package.'" Leila explained.

UPS told Leila they delivered her package to the right person at the right address, case closed. But did they?

Because that package was supposed to be delivered to an apartment in League City, Texas, outside of Houston. But police who investigated the incident determined it was actually delivered to the con man at a Walgreen's store. Why? The police report says, because the con man asked them to.

And who was the man who received the $10,000 package? UPS can't say. The police report shows, and the driver confirmed to CBS 5, that he simply handed the diamond rings to the man out in the street, without asking for identification.

We asked Leila what she thought of the fact that they dropped her package off with a guy at a Walgreen's.

"I think it's ridiculous," she responded. "And especially they just did it without checking ID."

Now some stranger has Leila's rings, and UPS says that extra coverage she paid for doesn't mean a thing.

"You know, I still have the habit of reaching down to touch and center them like I used to," Leila said quietly. "I feel sad. It feels empty."

UPS says the package was delivered correctly to the right person, and it's not their fault the check was fraudulent. But the owner of that San Francisco UPS store sees it differently. She told us drivers are only supposed to deliver high value packages to the address specified on the label and only after checking the recipient's ID.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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