In these times an order for 200 chicken sandwiches would be a godsend for a small town cafe. But you know the adage: If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
It may even be a trick.
Friendship Cafe manager, Trevor Suckow nearly fell victim to the serial scam that, had it been successful, would have cost the restaurant well over a thousand dollars in cash and material expense.
Friendship Cafe manager, Trevor Suckow nearly fell victim to the serial scam that, had it been successful, would have cost the restaurant well over a thousand dollars in cash and material expense.
The con went like this:
A few weeks ago, The Friendship Cafe received the request for 200 chicken sandwiches by a caller using the Telecommun-ications Relay Service (TRS).
TRS is a service provided for individuals with hearing or speech disabilities that allows for an intermediary to receive typed messages from an impaired individual which are then relayed verbally to a person at the other end of the line. Suckow said that a call through TRS wasn’t out of the ordinary, he had taken orders via the service before. In fact, he thought it may have even added an heir of authenticity to the request.
Working through the TRS, Suckow said that the scammer, who claimed to live in California, asked to place the large order of sandwiches that were to be for his mother’s birthday in June. A private carrier, who the caller said he had worked with for many years, would pick up the food to deliver.
After tallying approximately $900 in orders, the caller asked if he could overpay by an additional $900, which the cafe would then wire them so that they could pay the private carrier with cash.
At this point Suckow said it started to smell fishy – for a number of different reasons.
First off, the supposedly disabled individual turned down an offer to deliver the food for free. Secondly, conferring with long time residents within the restaurant, no one was aware of elderly resident with a son in California. Lastly, Suckow wondered why the carrier would not, if the ‘disabled’ individual had been with them so many years, take the caller’s credit card?
When Suckow finally ran the credit card and it came up denied, it was only further confirmation of his suspicions. But when the caller quickly came up with another card, that was from a totally different address and zip code in California, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Even though the caller attempted to explain away the new address by claiming that he was currently changing houses to be closer to a hospital where he was soon to receive surgery.
“You feel guilty. They take you in cause they’re using relay,” said Suckow. “I’m handicapped, going in for surgery, it’s my mother’s birthday... they’re playing all these spots trying to draw you in.”
After denying the request, Suckow said that he received a call three days later from another individual attempting the same scam again. And then two more tried it in the days after that.
“It was like script,” he said. “I don’t know if they passed my number around, or what.”
When Suckow saw a news report on a restaurant who had been subjected to the scheme, he knew that the attempted fraud was widespread and called the Better Business Bureau (BBB) to report his experience.
Having received other complaints from Minnesota and North Dakota, the BBB of the respective states have been issuing warnings of the scams since early June.
Had Suckow fallen victim to the deception inevitably the credit card would have turned up stolen. He would have been out the wired funds, the expense necessary to produce the order as well as the order itself.
“You’re all kind of excited and then you realize, this is way too good to be true,” said Suckow. “Luckily, we caught on before they actually took us for a ride.”
