Reports started trickling into state agricultural agencies in July: Consumers were worried about strange seed packets they had received in the mail. The unsolicited goods weren’t labeled and appeared to be sent from China. In a year already fraught with anxiety and paranoia, the story quickly made headlines. Perhaps this was the first you’d heard of a scam known as “brushing,” in which some third-party e-commerce sellers set up fake buyer accounts and ship unordered goods (in this case, seeds) to “customers.” Why would they do this? Read on.  A growing fraud  Brushing scammers set up fake accounts with Amazon, eBay and other online platforms so that they can order their own merchandise, ship it to a real address and then post glowing reviews that bolster their ratings....