Scams that Target Small Businesses

. . . a jewelry artist's experience

© by Donna Jadis; all rights reserved

Here's a new scam that I'd never heard of. Anyone in any kind of business with goods or products that can be resold is a potential target for this scam.

I have a web site for selling my jewelry. My name and email address are posted on the site, no other contact information.

I received a phone call at home. A male voice introduced himself as calling from Sprint Internet Relay service, and asked me if I'd ever gotten an internet relay call.

I said no, so he explained that this was a service for deaf or hard of hearing people, who use the internet to get on to one of these services. He said the relay service operator places the call, and the hearing impaired caller types their side of the conversation. The operator reads the typed message to the person receiving the call, and then types in the reply to the hearing impaired caller.

I agreed to go ahead with the call.

The man told me that the caller wanted to buy jewelry, so could I tell her (I think he said it was a woman) what I had available?

I said that there were too many items for me to go through a list, so why didn't she just shop on my web site? I asked for her name and how she'd gotten my phone number.

She said her name was "Rashy Hull" and she was from Georgia, and a friend from Oakland (gave a name) had given her my name and number.

Now, I'm on my computer while this call is going on, so I did a quick look up through the membership listing of an organization I belong to to see if there were any members with the name she'd given in Oakland. There was one whose name was close enough, so even though I didn't know him, I supposed that it was just slightly possible that there was a legitimate connection here.

(I also Googled "internet relay call" and found listings for legitimate services, such as Sprint and AT&T, and info that indicated that this was a legitimate service and as described by the operator.)

She asked if I have 18k gold, 14k gold, 12k gold, or silver jewelry. I said yes to silver but that I didn't work with anything more precious than gold-filled metals. I asked again why she didn't just look on my web site and gave the URL. She took a moment and then asked if I could send her 20 of one item.

I said that it could take awhile, but that I probably could. Then she started listing out other items saying that she wants 20 of each.

By now, dollar signs are dancing in my head, along with a vision of very tired hands from making some of the pieces she wants in the quantity she wants. I asked if she is a store owner or just doing some very early Christmas shopping.

She answered that her daughter was having a birthday party and she wanted to give gifts to her daughter and all of her friends.

I told her that some of the items she was asking about were not available. She said that she would go through the web site and send me a list of 50 items that she wanted and would I be able to ship in 2 days?

And... could I do her a favor?

Favor? Maybe... what is it? Could I find out and tell her the cost of a Toshiba laptop in a local store?

Why, I ask? Because she'd like for me to also pick up a Toshiba laptop and ship it to her with the jewelry.

Huh? Why would you want me to ship you a laptop from California, I ask? Because her daughter really wants a laptop for her birthday and she has no time to go out and get one, and her boss doesn't give her any extra time, and it would really be nice if I would do this for her and she'll pay me $400 extra just to do that.

I said that I wouldn't be able to do that. While she continued to try to convince me about the laptop, I googled "internet relay call SCAM" and got immediate listings describing just about what I was experiencing: that the internet relay call system is supported by the federal government, and that it is being abused by scammers who can make a totally anonymous connection, place calls from and to anywhere in the world AT NO COST, and get merchants to ship goods that can be resold. It has usually been someone calling from overseas asking that goods be shipped to Nigeria or someplace like that... but my caller was from Georgia.

Now I said to "Rashy" that I was very sorry, but I could see from the web pages that this was a known scam technique and I wouldn't be shipping any laptops.

She said that if I was a business person I needed to learn to trust people and why wouldn't I help her. Then the call ended. The operator said she'd hung up and so did I.

A few minutes later the phone rang again, another Sprint internet relay operator: it was Rashy calling back, apologizing that she'd been cut off, now why couldn't I help her with the laptop?

I said that I was sorry if this was a legitimate call, but that I wasn't in the laptop business, I was in the jewelry business. If she wanted to buy jewelry, she could look on my website and email me a list of what she wanted and I would tell her if the pieces were available. Other than that I couldn't help her and I was ending the call... and I hung up.

I figured that was the end of it, but it kept annoying me all evening. You just can't help it, really, someone calls wanting to buy *50* pieces of jewelry from you... yeah, I didn't quite trust it, especially with the red herring about the laptop thrown in, but part of you is saying, "wow, maybe this could be legit... I can't just blow it off on the chance that it COULD be legit."

The difficult part for the business targeted by this scam is that with the internet relay you get NO clues or cues about the potential legitimacy of the person on the other end. All you have is an operator acting as a conduit, there is nothing to tell you whether the caller is playing you or not.

The next morning my email had a message from Rashy... she provided a list of 33 pieces of jewelry from my web site and asked that I give her a cost on all including shipping. There was no mention of a laptop. It added up to $1,300!

I still played along: I emailed back asking for a complete shipping address so I could figure the charges, and would she be wanting this order shipped overnight?

I played along for two reasons:

1. Assuming it was a scam, I could waste their time for awhile, perhaps even collect some evidence that could be used against them.

2. That little bird was still tweeting in my head that it just might be legit.

I got back an address that couldn't be verified through any of the online white pages services. I told her that and then asked for a telephone number, a credit card number with name, expiration date and CVV code. I was surprised when she provided all that info in a return email.

The phone number couldn't be found in the "reverse lookup" services, BUT had a New York area code (she'd said she was from Georgia). I got a number for verifying Visa credit card numbers and put the number she'd given into the system; it came back invalid. I emailed back to say that all the numbers she'd given me were invalid and that seems to have been the end of the attempt.

Be wary, listen to your intuition, and protect yourself.

If you have a web site, you may find yourself a potential victim of this type of scam. If you have a registered domain name, you should add "WHOIS privacy" to your registration: that means that your full contact information (home address, phone number) will not be displayed to anyone who does a "whois" lookup on your domain name - they just get an anonymous email relay that goes through the company that registers your domain.

That doesn't prevent these people from finding you, though. We're all out there on the net now, unless you are really careful about your web presence. I have had WHOIS privacy on my domains for about a month now, so I'm still not certain how this person got my home phone number.

They tried to call me again the next morning. This time I told the Sprint relay operator that I wasn't accepting IR calls because they were most likely a scam, so please tell the person on the other end that I knew they were trying to defraud me and hung up.

THAT'S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO, TOO!

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