Ok, finally, I am posting the article that I was interviewed for. The local newspaper here is the Bloomington Herald-Times.
Arlene Davis smelled a rat. So she toyed with her catch for several days before frustrating him with a tiny speck of cheese.
Now she wants to alert the public about the attempted scam, which she suspects has victimized a number of people in south-central Indiana.
Initial contact
It began several weeks ago, when the Bloomingtonwoman posted a queen-sized bed for sale on craigslist.org.
A man e-mailed her, saying he was interested in the bed, but didn’t have time to come see it.
He agreed to pay $300 — $50 less than her original asking price — saying his bank soon would mail her a check. He added that he’d arrange for a moving company to pick up the bed and take it to Ohio.
“Since we’re in a college town, I thought the story sounded fairly reasonable,” she said. “But something just seemed weird.”
Red flags
A few weeks later, the man informed her by e-mail that UPS would deliver her the check that day, but the bank had made a mistake — making it out for a little more than the $300.
“I thought he might be a college student who was buying the bed and shipping it back home,” she said. “I figured he’d told his parents the price of the bed was $350, and wanted me to give him the $50 difference so he could spend it on beer.”
Later that day, when Davis opened the UPS package, she found a check from the man for $2,000, along with a request to wire the $1,700 overpayment to a friend of his in Florida.
“Red flags jumped up everywhere,” she said. “It was a fairly real-looking fake check, but it didn’t look quite right. I decided I needed to buy some time to alert the authorities.” The check turned out to be bogus, and had she followed instructions, she’d now be short $1,700.
Laying out the cheese
Instead, she told the man via e-mail that she wanted to cash the check before wiring his “friend” the money. He said he needed at least some of the cash that night to handle a personal emergency.
That night she e-mailed him, telling him the wire transfer service she was using for money transfers was down, making it impossible for her to send the money until the next morning.
The next morning, she told him she had an emergency herself, and would be unable to wire the money until later that day.
“I made up those stories to give me time to notify authorities,” she said.
Davis called local law enforcement officials, whom she said directed her to the FBI. She said a FBI agent told her to file an online complaint with the agency.
Back at you
Then it was payback time. She went to Wal-Mart and wired the man a grand total of $1.
“I was annoyed because he’d wasted my time,” she said. “I wanted to waste some of his time.”
At Wal-Mart, she said a saleswoman asked her why she was spending $11.46 to wire $1.
“When I explained my situation, the saleswoman said I was the fourth person that week who’d come in to wire money for either the same scam or one similar to it,” she said. “She said I was the only one of the four who didn’t wire the entire amount. One of the victims was an elderly woman.”
Davis said the Wal-Mart saleswoman encouraged her to report the scam by phone to the money transfer service. She did just that, and the company, which has a policy in place that covers such scam attempts,returned her $12.46 for making the report.
Taking care of customers
“The Wal-Mart saleswoman really seemed to care,” Davis said. “She was doing her best to prevent people from being scammed.”
Phillip Keene, spokesman for Wal-Mart, said, “The safety and security of our customers and associates is a top priority at Wal-Mart, and this case is just one of the many examples of how we care about our neighbors and the communities we serve.”
After wiring $1 to the would-be scammer, Davis informed him by e-mail that she was onto him and had alerted federal authorities.
“He answered me and accused me of not sending him the money I owed him,” she said. “That made me laugh out loud.”
Davis has been e-mailing the scoundrel consistently since then, rubbing salt in his wound, but he has not replied.
“I want people to watch out for this scam,” she said. “They need to be smart, especially when some stranger is asking you to wire him money.”
Watch out for yourself
Monroe County Prosecutor Chris Gaal agrees, saying this scam is a variation of the classic Nigerian dignitary e-mail appeal for money in exchange for the promise of more.
“Your first line of defense is to educate yourself as a consumer,” he said. “It’s far better to prevent a scam from happening than trying to react to the scam after the fact.”
Gaal said even if law enforcement officials are able to find one of these e-mail predators — which can be extremely difficult — it may be hard to extradite him.
“And even if you can get that accomplished and get a conviction, the scam artist may not have any money left,” he said.
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