Thought I Was The Victim Of A Mail Scam, But Now The Rightful Recipient Of The Package Wants It

Location: KY & PA

Around a month ago, I came home to 3 huge air purifiers on my doorstep that were addressed to me with my name and address on them that I definitely did NOT order. They were delivered via FedEx. The return address on the label was a generic shipping fulfillment hub. And looking up the tracking number also yielded no useful information about their origin.

When I googled the product, they were like $500 each. I was floored. I didn’t know what to do, so I talked to some people about it and came to the conclusion that I must have been a victim of a brushing scam, in which products are mailed to people in order for companies to create fake reviews impersonating you as the buyer. I still was never satisfied with this though, as it seemed extreme to send me three, especially for a very expensive product.

I gave one of the air purifiers to a friend, who has been using it, and the other two I have just kept in box unsure of what to do with them.

Jump forward to today, I get an email from someone I did some freelance work for last year. Apparently, according to him, he had ordered those air purifiers and claimed that the air purifier company’s AI somehow got my address from his business PayPal account. And now he wants me to mail him the air purifiers.

First of all, that seems like a privacy and security concern. How is it possible for the air purifier company to get my name and address from his PayPal???

Second, I am happy to mail the air purifiers back, but I am concerned about the used one. My friend even said she would give it back to me to ship back, but she no longer has the box and it’s been used for the last month. I am worried about somehow being held financially responsible for the air purifier being used. Is that possible? I don’t want to even admit to him via email that I have the air purifiers if there’s a chance I could be held financially responsible here.