‘E-scam’ gets no respect

Your Internet fraud advice last week was fine, as far as it went.

Last month, “Rose” responded to my “furniture for sale” add in a local newspaper's online classified. It was one of those “I'll send you a check to cover the sale and the shipping—you wire the balance to the shipping company”scams. The $4,000 “check” arrived from London, addressed in bad, all-capital block printing. My furniture had been advertised at $125.

As Rose pushed me to cash the check and wire the remaining money immediately, I responded that my wife had donated the item to the church and that there was nothing to sell. I asked Rose to send me an address to return the check and the reply was to please donate $300 to the church, and wire the rest, today.

Did I say the address I was to wire the cash to was a hotel the UK?

This was the third check scam to hit my little Westlake neighborhood and the second one to come to my local bank. So I asked the newspaper where I placed my ad if they might publish some kind of warning about this scam. They declined. My bank said they would have cashed this bogus $4,000 check because I was such a “good customer,” but that in the end the money would have come out of my account—not theirs. Banks never loose.

The Sheriff called me and told me it was their policy not too deal with anything under $100,000. Their response was something like, “If people are that stupid to fall for this, it’s their problem.” Oh, and the Sheriff also said there was no crime here because money did not change hands. Luckily none had.

So the bottom line is that unless you really do loose more than $100,000 on an Internet deal, there is no crime. Under that amount is just too far under the radar to care about. The Ecrooks know all this and I guess that's why E-fraud is such a growth business. No guns. Good hours. Equal opportunity. Work at home, and there are plenty of stupid Americans around to rip off. Roger Thornhill Westlake Village