By Neil Farrell
It’s a common scam — some anonymous person on the other end of an email or text message offers to buy something you’ve put for sale on some online sales mart, but something’s funny about the whole deal.
The person’s spelling and grammar in messages might be a little off, or should you speak with them on the phone, they sound like a foreigner. Then he offers to buy your merchandise and offers to send you a check for much more than the asking price and to send back the change…
For far too many trusting souls, this scam and countless others like it, has meant a huge loss after the check bounces, and the bank holds them responsible.
Losses total in the millions year after year, despite repeated warnings from law enforcement, to the point that one wonders, “How can anyone be so gullible?”
Such was the case recently when Morro Bay resident Pauline Stansbury put an antique, claw foot cast iron tub up for sale on Craig’s List.
It was last May, she explained, right after the Citywide Yard Sale, and she’d put the tub along with some very nice antique chairs for sale online. She started getting the emails right away.
She said the first ones came from “Michigan,” which made her wonder why someone across the country would be interested in a tub in her garage?
“They wanted my phone number, and address,” she said. “They wanted to send me the check by Priority Mail and would send someone to pick up the tub. It just didn’t make any sense.”
And for good reason, the people on the other end were trying to scam her. She decided to play along.
She gave them a phony name and the address next door, which is a family vacation home and sits empty for much of the time. It was easy enough to keep an eye on the mail, as she usually does that for her neighbor anyway.
Last April 15, she got a check, sent in a Post Office Priority Mail package. It was odd to get a check in that packaging instead of a simple envelope, she thought. The check was for $1,850.98 and certainly looked real. It was printed out on check paper, bank account numbers on one side and the typical watermarks on the back. The signature read “Prince Lee.”
It’s supposedly drawn on Webster Bank of Waterbury, Conn., which an online search quickly revealed is indeed a real bank that’s been in business since the 1930s.
The Bay News sent an email to Webster’s headquarters asking about the use of the bank’s name for such scams but did not get a response. We also sent an email to Goodway Technologies of Stamford, Conn., — which is listed as the account holder on the check, and also didn’t get a response.
A quick Google search by a suspicious, targeted person would find that Webster Bank and Goodway Technologies do indeed exist and the check sure looks real, but Stansbury wasn’t fooled.
“Once you take that to the bank,” she said, “you’re wiped out because that check’s going to bounce.” The scam doesn’t actually work unless the victim sends back the money and since Stansbury had used a fake name in the first place, she couldn’t cash it anyway.
Other suspicious aspects of the whole thing stick out too. For instance the return address on the package label lists “John Allentown” and “Brookhaven College” in “Farmers Branch, Texas.”
There is indeed a Brookhaven College in Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas. Brookhaven is a junior college established in 1978. However, John Allentown is apparently a ghost.
The Bay News sent an email to the school asking whether its good name had been used in such scams in the past? Turns out that it has.
“We are very concerned and upset by the fact that someone is using the college’s name to attempt to defraud anyone,” Meridith Danforth, the director of marketing and creative services at Brookhaven said in an email. “Unfortunately, the woman in your story is not the only one who has been targeted.
“We received dozens of pieces of returned mail with the name ‘John Allentown’ beginning in March of last year. Sgt. Jason Brown of the Brookhaven College Police Department handled the investigation at the college.” No arrests were made from the investigation and the college says this Allentown guy is indeed bogus.
“There’s no one by this name affiliated with the college,” Danforth said, “and we’ve investigated the names on the returned mail and found no connection with these people and the college.”
Sgt. Brown took his findings to the local Post Office manager in April 2015, she added. “She recommended we submit the information to the U.S. Postal Inspector to pursue the investigation, and we did so on April 2, 2015. At this time, a postal investigator has not yet contacted us about our report. This is the first we have heard of letters in more than a year.”
Stansbury did call local police regarding the scam, but there was little they could do outside giving her the usual warnings to beware and advising that she not try to cash the check.
Stansbury, whose husband Arthur died about 2-years ago, did eventually sell the claw foot tub to some local folks in South County who were redecorating a home. She sold the antique chairs too and has other items that she doesn’t need. But she’ll be extra careful and advises everyone else to be so too when dealing with anyone over the Internet.
It all goes back to if something sounds too good to be true, it is.
