Comment by Cookingboy

"While it's technically breaking the law, its no more so than AirBnb and Uber/Lyft. And the demand is just as high if not more."

That's is absolutely not correct. Please do not compare individual countries' custom law to your local city's taxi law or hotel code. Lying on custom declaration form is an imprisonable offense in most countries.

When it's an informal practice it works because it's hard to prove and there is no paper trail. But when it's a real company doing the service all the customers data has a paper trail to it with financial records for each transaction, involving the monetary amount paid by the customer, received by the carrier, earned by the company, etc. It's literally a prosecutor's wet dream.

At least in China, these kind of organized smuggling rings do exist, but they exist very much underground with no paper trail, because if caught, the ring leaders (founders of Backpack in this case) would be subject to from prison terms to execution depends on the amount of tax they evaded.