Important info for not only business owners

[Barefoot]

Hey all,

We just got contacted for a wedding reception on Oct 16th, 2004 in St Louis Mo. It was relayed through a TTY operator (Usually used by deaf people) so we figured they were deaf which is not a problem. We qouted our price and they said no problem, what is your address to send payment? We gave our address and proceeded to ask for their personal info to setup their account and they kept side stepping the questions..(yellow flag goes up!).. They then wanted us to do them a favor. They wanted to send us a cashiers check for 3000.00 and retain our fee and send the balance to their photographer..(BIG red flag goes up!!).... I tried to get as much info as I could get, and I got my husband on my cell and he called the police. I then asked for their photographers phone # so we could contact them to make sure this was on the up&up, they gave me an overseas number... I then tried to get his personal info, address, numbers, venue ect... he wouldn't give this info...

Can we say SCAM!

Without going into great detail, this is the info we got from them... BEWARE ALL!!!! and report it if you get a call like this or from this person....

Name: Daniel Random
Email: daniel@racemail.com
Photographer Number: 234-80-34-33-12-44
Photographer Name: Fide Sidebe


Be cautious on anything like this, also we (DJs) aren't the only target... pass this info to everyone you know... An elderly lady north of us got this scam also but she was selling a car and didn't realize the danger and went through with it... They sent her a check for more than the asking price of the car and had her send the remainder to someone else. Now she owes her bank thousands of dollars because the check was bogus ...


Dee

[Barefoot]

Here's the newspaper article about my husband's and my experience.
There's only one problem, our last name is not FALLEE. Close, but not quite!
LMAO!!

Dee


By hook or by crook

Phone-scam predators weave a tangled web in a $1-billion-a-year business
By RC Balaban
Globe Staff Writer
10/5/04
Print this story

The call started off with a question about booking Audio Pulse Digital Mobile DJ Service for an Oct. 16 wedding reception.
Dee Fallee, who owns and operates the Joplin-based service with her husband, Dave, began taking information from the caller.
Red flags came up with the first question Fallee asked. When she wanted to know where the reception was going to be, the reply was “somewhere in Missouri.”
Fallee had to press the caller to get more information. Finally, the man told her the reception would be in St. Louis and asked her how much she would charge.
Fallee picked $750 out of thin air, and the caller agreed to it without a moment’s hesitation. Then came the favor.
The caller said he was overseas on his honeymoon, and could not pay both Fallee and the photographer he had lined up.
“He said, ‘We need to send you a cashier’s check for $3,000. Take your fee out of it, then send the rest to the photographer,’ ” Fallee said.
Had Fallee gone for it, she would have become one of the many people across the country falling prey to phone scams. PhoneBusters, an anti-fraud call center, estimates that phone scams are a $1 billion-a-year business.
The scam is fairly simple. The caller attempts to purchase goods or services by sending a cashier’s check for more than the agreed-upon amount. Then the caller asks the business to send the extra amount back. The cashier’s check turns out to be bogus, and the business has lost a sizable sum of money.
This type of scam is not new, but the case included a new twist. The caller relayed the call through a telecommunications relay service, which is most typically used by the deaf or hard-of-hearing.
Sgt. Brian Lewis, with the Joplin Police Department, said he believes this type of call would be basically untraceable.
“If it comes in on a truncated system, it’s untraceable anyway,” Lewis said.
The fact that the caller was using the service in the first place raised concerns with Fallee.
“I thought it was a little strange that a deaf person would be calling a DJ service,” she said.
Still, Fallee thought the caller might be interested in the service for family and friends at the reception. She pressed on with the phone call.
Joplin police Cmdr. Jim Hounschell said it’s hard to gauge the prevalence of telephone scams in the area because a lot of people don’t report them.
Lewis said one type of call he gets is people complaining about callers asking to verify credit card numbers.
“If someone calls trying to verify your credit card number, don’t give it out,” Lewis said — especially since there’s a new scam playing off credit card companies watching out for their customers.
When a credit card company notices unusual activity on a person’s card, a customer-service representative will call and verify that the rightful owner is indeed the one making the transactions.
Scammers have turned this to their advantage by calling people and pretending to be representatives from the credit card company. They tell the target that there has been unusual activity on the card and ask for information to verify the person’s identity. With this information, the scammer now has what is needed to start a buying spree.
In Fallee’s case, she asked for information about the alleged photographer. After a long period of time, the caller responded with the name and number of someone in Norway.
This raised more doubts with Fallee, given that the wedding photographers she knows start around $2,000 and can be as expensive as $10,000.
“I was like, ‘You’re going to have an overseas photographer come to the U.S. for $2,250?’ ” Fallee said.
She pressed harder, asking for the caller’s contact information. After 25 minutes, he finally told her she could contact him at the photographer’s number.
“I was like, ‘If I can contact you at the photographer’s number, then why don’t you just pay him yourself?’ ” Fallee said.
Fallee apparently fired too many questions at the caller. The operator told her the caller had disconnected.