It may look like a shipping mistake or a strange promotion, but experts say this is a scam carried out by international businesses.
Nicole Nassif says unwanted Walmart boxes kept showing up at her doorstep.
"I came home one day and there was a box at my front door that was addressed to my restaurant at my home address," Nassif said.
Nassif opened the box to find two bottles of barbeque sauce inside. As a restaurant owner, she wondered if it was a promotion.
"But then more boxes started coming, and they always had two bottles of Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce on them. And I didn't know what to do at that point, so I started calling the return addresses on the boxes," Nassif said.
The shipments were not from the real Sweet Baby Ray's in the Chicago area, but from an international reseller. One box after another kept coming.
"There was a lot of confusion," Nassif said.
Nassif discovered her South Loop restaurant, Imee's Mediterranean Kitchen, was being impersonated on Walmart Marketplace. Her home address was listed as the "return address."
Eli Clemens from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says overseas businesses are using U.S. addresses to avoid following rules of an international seller. They do not want to pay for a pre-paid international return label, and they do not want to pay to get the products back, anyway.
"Unfortunately, I think U.S. consumers are just going to be the victims in this, and there's not a lot of options for recourse," Clemens said.
Nassif says it took several weeks, dozens of emails and follow-up calls to get Walmart to remove her address as that "return address."
"It was a full-time job. I spent 60 hours, at least," Nassif said.
The company told ABC7, "Walmart takes the integrity of its Marketplace seriously, using multiple layers of verification and continuous monitoring to help ensure that only legitimate, trustworthy sellers are allowed on the platform. We have zero tolerance for inaccuracies and take swift action to remove noncompliant listings."
Nassif had contacted our San Francisco sister station after they covered a similar story in the Bay Area. A woman there was being bombarded with Amazon packages she never ordered for more than a year. Amazon said it apologized to the customer and helped her resolve the issue.
Nassif says she is thankful that her boxes of barbecue sauce have stopped stacking up.
"Honestly, it was nuts. I was like, 'What in the hay is going on?'" Nassif said.
So, how can you protect yourself?
Experts say it is tough but consider using data deletion services to reduce your online footprint. And if this happens to you, document everything and contact the platform directly.