My question involves criminal law for the state of: CT
I've been receiving business credit card offers with promotional codes to my home address. I used these promotional codes to open cards for rewards points using MY OWN business information which were approved with no problem.
Today, I received my my 4th or 5th targeted offer and discovered to my shock, that these targeted offers were not addressed to me. It is my home address, but the business name is not mine. There is no individual person's name. These envelopes do not have the address on the front, but they have it on the back so I just assumed they were targeted to me.
Moreover, the letters inside do not contain a specific business or individual name or address. They were just generic letters addressed to "Dear Business Owner:". Finally during the application process, while using the promotion code, there was no mention of any other business or that the promotion code was targeted to another.
I wanted to make sure I'm not in some kind of trouble here. I opened the envelopes in good faith thinking they were mine since they were in my mailbox, not some mail fraud where I'm cashing other people's checks or stealing their identity. Moreover, they're still sending me the same targeted offer, so I did not deprive anyone of the opportunity to apply because even after using some targeted offers, they keep sending me new ones with the same rewards points promotion.
I've read Mr. Knowitalls posts here where he believes KNOWINGLY conversion of misdirected mail would constitute a crime. But here I unknowingly opened the mail which contained generic letters with no identifying business or personal information. Also read the legal definition of conversion must be real property but doesn't say anything about a marketing offer. Let me know what you guys think or if there is any action I need to take to be on the right side of the law and what I should do now. Thank you.
http://www.expertlaw.com/forums/show...t=33129&page=3
I can see the statute being applied to somebody who knowingly converts misdirected mail (you cash a check addressed to your neighbor, but mistakenly delivered to you)
I'll concede that, thirty or so years ago, there was apparently a split between the circuits largely consistent with my prior statements - most circuits saying "the law ends when the addressee removes the mail from the mailbox" and a few circuits extending the law to the theft or conversion of misdelivered mail by the addressee

