Charles Coleman of Oak Forest, Illinois, spent months receiving daily deliveries of fireplace-shaped diffusers he never ordered, totaling more than 150 packages since last September, after a TikTok Shop seller apparently used his address as a fraudulent return destination. A consumer advocate told NBC 5 Responds the scheme is a form of identity theft where scammers list fake addresses to obscure their location, and often don't want the merchandise back because reprocessing returns costs more than absorbing the loss. TikTok removed the incorrect return address after NBC 5 intervened, but only after Coleman's complaints to TikTok, the FTC, and the U.S. Postal Inspector went unanswered.
