This is a short story from back in the day. My 1st seed order was to The Seedbank in Amsterdam in the early 1990s. I had probably seen an ad in High Times for them, and I requested a catalog, which I still have somewhere.; the NL5 x Haze in the catalog looked awesome and so I sent around $100 from USA to overseas. Up to that time, I had just grown bagseed. But I was out in Cali, and the bagseed was good. Well, wouldn't you know that about a week or two later, I see an article in High Times that something was going on at The Seedbank with the police seizing records or trying to shut them down or something like that. So, already nervous due to Operation Green Merchant and such, I decided to call them from a payphone and cancel my order ! So i call them and some guy answers, and I tell him I'm worried and a bit paranoid, and want to cancel my order. I ask him if he thinks the phone is tapped and he says "probably !" So I say, well how do I cancel without telling you my name ? And he says something like what did you order, when did you order and what city are the seeds being shipped to ? And while I'm telling him, I have to put many more quarters in the phone booth because my 3 minutes are up ! He looks thru his list for a minute and says, yeah, I see the order right here, and it hasn't been shipped yet. A bit relieved, I said can you cancel it and send me a refund ? He says sure....so that was that.
And if you're wondering if I ever got the refund, the answer is no.
It wasn't until around 2005 that I began ordering seeds again, either from Hemp Depot in Canada, or maybe Seed Boutique overseas, and had them sent to a friend's place. Made a few orders back then - C99, SSH, NL - and I think one of about 3 or 4 was seized at the border.