I get ripped mail, things "accidently opened" etc all the time and none of it has ever been anything illegal....just a note from the the post office that it got caught in a piece of machinery or something.....sounds like he just got unlucky. Someone kept shipping me seeds in cardboard and they kept crushing so i think alot of mail goes through "machines" of some type. Something solid like a cd case that can't be crushed or "accidently ripped" seems the way to go to me. I've sent a fair amount of seeds to people (and had seeds sent to me) without any problem whatsoever......save the cardboard experience which happened twice so I gave up on it (again....sent to me that way.....) and i always mail them in something SOLID. So do the seed venders as a rule.