{"id":468264,"date":"2026-02-14T13:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T13:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/468264\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T13:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T13:22:07","slug":"agriculture-officials-warn-of-chinese-brushing-scam-that-threatens-u-s-biosecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/468264\/","title":{"rendered":"Agriculture officials warn of Chinese &#8216;brushing scam&#8217; that threatens U.S. biosecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) \u2014 Agriculture officials are warning of a biosecurity threat stemming from unsolicited packages being mailed in from China.<\/p>\n<p>Packets of seeds are being sent to addresses in the state, according to a social media post from the West Virginia Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n<p>The post seed packets are part of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uspis.gov\/news\/scam-article\/brushing-scam\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a brushing scam<\/a>, meaning unsolicited packages without a return address are distributed to generate fraudulent reviews, boosting ratings and sales numbers. <\/p>\n<p>Agriculture officials ask anyone who receives seeds in the mail from an unknown sender to file a report by calling 304-558-3200.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) \u2014 Agriculture officials are warning of a biosecurity threat stemming from unsolicited packages being mailed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-468264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}