The Emporia Gazette

February 12, 2012

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Representatives of three Emporia businesses want other business owners warned about a scam they believe is underway in this area.

In each case, someone has used a system for hearing-impaired people to call the businesses and try to make arrangements to have services done and charged to credit cards. The caller apparently types in a message, and a live operator passes the message on to the business representative. In each case the complete spiel was given, the caller wanted the business to add $1,000 or more to the credit card; then the business person was to send the caller a check for the excess amount.

“They’ve called three times,” said Sarah Meenen, co-owner of Meenen Transmission and Automotive. “It’s a relay operator, and whoever calls the relay operator is doing it through the Internet and the call is untraceable.”

Meenen said the calls have a similar thread.

“The main gist of the scam is that they have late-model, high-dollar vehicles, such as an ’07 Escalade, that needs to be towed from Michigan or someplace far away because they have relatives that live in the area,” she said.

The caller wanted Meenens to pay the tow driver, then charge the cost to the credit card of the caller, plus the excess money that was to be added to the card and forwarded to the caller. “When you take a credit card by phone, they can cancel that,” she said. “They can stop that payment for any reason whatsoever. So, we would have paid this tow driver whatever, $1,000 to $2,000, and then they would cancel the card.”

Another call through the hearing-impaired system asked that Meenens send the money to the tow driver up-front, by Western Union.

“And we said, ‘You can do that.’ And they say, ‘Oh, no.’ They gave some excuse of why they couldn’t,” Meenen said.

The Meenens were suspicious about the circumstances described to them. The Escalade, for example, should have been under warranty. And the Meenens wondered why the caller had chosen a company in Kansas to make the repairs when there should be good repair shops closer to Michigan.

“They said we were highly recommended, blah, blah, blah,” Meenen said.

And, while she agrees the shop does good work, the flattery did not move the Meenens to accept the job and the credit card.

A similar call came to a towing company this week.

“Basically, they called in and asked where the nearest airport was,” said Richelle Birk of Flint Hills Towing. “They were getting three cars shipped here and they wanted us to go out, pick them up and then bring them back to the yard and store them for three days. Then they would get us paid when somebody got down here. They would give us a credit card.”

The company requires customers calling from out of town to fill out a form to provide credit-card information. The caller was reluctant to provide his name and refused to give a phone or fax number.

“Then he wouldn’t give a billing address for the credit card,” Birk said.

That caller, too, wanted Flint Hills to add $1,200 to the bill, charge it to the credit card, then wire the money to the caller.

Birk said that she had tried to get information about where the call was coming from, and could find out nothing.

“It’s through this I711.com,” she said. “It’s a very generic Web site. No information, nothing.”

They did have the phone number, (877) 885-3172, and the operator’s number, 80304F, and called the I711 operator back.

“She said, ‘We can’t trace it; we can’t do that,’” Birk said.

Beth Wilson of Thurston’s Plus said the company had received two phone calls and had hung up on a third.

“The first one, I’ll bet it was a month go. We got it at the after-hours number,” she said. “What was odd about it ... when you pick it up, it comes across that it’s from a hearing-impaired person.”

The operator asked if she was familiar with the hearing-impaired process.

“So you think someone’s in distress,” she said. “You go ahead and say, ‘Sure, what can I help you with?’ We thought someone was really in distress and needed help.”

As the communication progressed, Wilson said she and her husband were able to get the caller to switch from hearing impaired communications to e-mail, to simplify the process.

They became suspicious when they learned the man was supposedly in Florida, the car was in South Carolina, and he wanted it towed to Thurston’s for some needed body work.

“Yeah, right,” Wilson said. “I’m sure there are a lot of qualified repair facilities between South Carolina and Kansas. Granted, we’ve fixed vehicles from Kansas City, Mo., Oklahoma ... But South Carolina?”

The man was “real pushy,” she said, and offered to give his credit card number so Thurston’s could pay for the tow and be reimbursed through the caller’s credit card.

“Why doesn’t your carrier just take your credit card number,” Wilson said she asked the man. “’They’re in the U.K. and can’t do it.’ It was getting deep at this point. ... Finally we asked enough quetions we didn’t get any more communications.”

The second call, two weeks ago, again came over the hearing-impaired relay.

“This time when I got it, just right off the bat I asked why did you choose our facility,” she said. “You’re welcome to get the vehicle here, but I am not charging a credit card number until I see the vehicle and I have an authorization for repair signed.

“We called a (police) officer at that point because we figured others are getting calls.”

A third call since has come in Thurston’s from the same type of line, asking if she were familiar with the hearing-impair call process.

“I said, ‘Yes, I am,’” she said, “‘but unless this is to pursue an authentic repair, we’re not interested.’ Click.”