[Tech News] Thought-controlled bionic arm restores touch in first home trial: inside the Utah neuroprosthetic breakthrough

He controls it with his thoughts — and he can feel with it too Alexander "Avi" Davidson, 33, of Tampa, Florida, just became the first person in the world to take home a thought-controlled bionic arm that restores the sense of touch. As the inaugural participant in a first-of-its-kind clinical trial at the University of Utah, Davidson is now using the neuroprosthetic in everyday life — writing, playing cards, making a tuna sandwich, and, in his words, the thing that matters most: holding his wife's hand and feeling her hand in return. The trial will follow him for a full year, offering the first real-world test of whether nerve-connected prosthetics can genuinely transform daily life for people with limb loss. From a 35-foot fall to a Luke Skywalker arm At 16, Davidson fell 35 feet from the top of a telephone pole. The accident left him paralyzed from the waist down and led to the amputation of his left arm below the elbow. Seventeen years later, he's testing techn...
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[Tech News] The $2 Postage Scam That Cost the US Postal Service $126 Million


A website was selling US shipping labels for a flat $2 — any weight, any size, any destination. Thousands of online sellers jumped at the deal. The US Department of Justice now says those labels were counterfeit, and the damage to the US Postal Service has crossed $126 million.

What happened

On September 28, 2026, the DOJ announced that a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida had indicted Faheem Akram, 33, of Khanewal, Pakistan, for allegedly operating LabelsBank.com — a site prosecutors say sold more than 5.1 million counterfeit US postage labels without ever being authorized to sell USPS products.

Investigators say over 5,200 customers bought labels through the site, typically paying about $2 per label no matter what the parcel weighed or where it was going. The resulting lost postage revenue and shipping costs to the Postal Service are estimated at more than $126 million.

US authorities have seized the website and shut it down under a court order. The case was investigated by the Miami Division of the US Postal Inspection Service. Akram faces ten federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, five counts of making and selling counterfeit postage, and four counts of wire fraud. The Postal Inspection Service is offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

One important note: an indictment is a charge, not a conviction. Akram is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

How the $2 scheme worked

The pitch was brutally simple. Real US postage is priced by weight, size, and distance — shipping a heavy parcel can easily cost $15 or more. LabelsBank allegedly charged a flat $2 per label for everything, letting buyers ship parcels at a fraction of the legitimate price.

Most customers appear to have been small e-commerce sellers — the kind of people running eBay, Etsy, or Shopify stores — trying to cut their shipping costs. At $2 a label, the savings looked irresistible. But every underpaid parcel shifted the real cost onto the Postal Service, and at a scale of 5.1 million labels, those small discounts added up to nine figures.

Why this matters to you

You don't have to run a scam website to get burned by this kind of fraud. Here are the practical takeaways:

  • If postage is far below official rates, it's counterfeit. Nobody can legally sell you USPS postage at an 80–90% discount. "Discount postage" sites and social media ads offering exactly that are a red flag.
  • Using counterfeit postage is itself a federal crime. Buyers who thought they were just getting a bargain were participating in a fraud scheme — some may now face questions from investigators.
  • Buy postage only from USPS.com or authorized vendors. If a deal on shipping labels sounds too good to be true, check the vendor against USPS's official list before paying.
  • Sellers: the savings aren't worth it. A few dollars saved per parcel means nothing next to a federal fraud investigation.

Protect yourself from online fraud

Schemes like LabelsBank work because they look like ordinary e-commerce — a professional website, checkout flow, and customer support. The best defense is understanding how online fraud operates before you become a target. Cybersecurity For Dummies is a beginner-friendly guide that walks through phishing, fraud, and identity-theft schemes in plain language — worth a read if you buy or sell anything online.

This article contains an affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Source: US Department of Justice press release, Southern District of Florida, September 28, 2026.

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