Scams aplenty

By DOUG HARLOW
Staff Writer

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/4171705.html

Mail and Internet scam artists promising big money for little effort are hitting public officials and private citizens equally these days.

Waterville Police Chief Joseph Massey was a target a few weeks ago when he was sent bank checks totaling $4,750 in an attempted fraud case that was turned over to the FBI.

A week or two later, an older couple in Benton lost $3,000 in another similar scam.

At first, the Benton couple thought they were $46,000 richer in a grant award from a large chain store; the next minute they were bouncing checks from their own bank account, the victims of so-called "cross-border" fraud from Canada.

The checks looked so real, the said. But they were counterfeit.

In another recent scam, a woman from Fairfield went to the police station Thursday to report a scam she found in the classified section of the Morning Sentinel, according to police Officer Amie Trahan.

The woman responded to an ad for "mystery shoppers," in which applicants can earn up to $150 per day doing undercover shopping to judge service at retail and dining establishments.

"She stated that she had done the job before, she had done it two other times with legitimate companies, so she called the phone number and they said they would send her an application," Trahan said Friday.

The woman received the application along with a check in the amount of $2,775. She was directed to cash the check and get a Money Gram at Wal-Mart and send them back the money to see if the process worked smoothly.

For that, she would receive $300 in "training pay," according to the paperwork.

"She went to cash it and it was counterfeit -- it was no good -- it's a scam," Trahan said.

The return address was in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Had the bank cashed the check against the woman's account, she would have been charged the full amount, as the Benton couple were last month.

Trahan said it is not clear how many people have fallen for scams, which again, appeared to be legitimate on the surface.

"We could do this every day," she said. "We see them every single day and there's not going to be two that are the same, there's just so many out there.

The ad for "mystery shoppers" also appeared in the Kennebec Journal.

Rick DeBruin, advertising sales manager at the Kennebec Journal, said Friday the company is aware of the situation.

"We were contacted by the police and have told them we would look into the matter and take appropriate steps," he said.