Letter to the Editor

Postmaster warns of money order scams

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Dear editor:

I am hoping you will share some of my concern for our fellow residents of Mountain Home and consider publishing a message about fake money orders.

We have, over the last couple of months, seen a significant increase in the number of fake postal money orders that have been presented at our retail counters, or given to me directly. As the economy continues to stagnate at a weak level, predators are finding more and more innocent people looking for ways to make some extra money. Most of these predators operate from overseas locations (primarily Nigeria), but use the internet as their medium, so they use stolen identities in order to appear to be from somewhere like Chicago, or Santa Clara. Additionally, once these predators have made initial contact with somebody, they pursue that contact extremely aggressively, often making threats designed to scare people into doing what they say.

Here are the typical tricks of their trade:

Secret Shopper program -- Under the disguise of an American corporation looking for people to employ secret shoppers, they (foreign scam artists) send documentation explaining the bogus process including a payment for services that includes cashing postal money orders, using a portion of the proceeds for the shopping experience, keeping a portion and sending the remaining amount to an address somewhere in the U.S. (This address is obtained from stolen identification and the recipient never knows about the transaction, or sees any of the money). Ebay is a common avenue for these types of scams, but they use many different avenues.

Craigslist Purchasing­ -- Under the pretense of an interested buyer, they send postal money orders as payment and ask that the seller cash them, take the purchase amount to western union, or mail the remaining amount.

Looking for Love -- Scammers use online social networking services to find people looking for companionship/friendship. Once they have made contact and presented themselves as a friend, they convince their new online friend to help them get money to a friend who needs it desperately. Again, they send a postal money order and ask that it be cashed and some of the proceeds be sent to an address somewhere in the United States.

These are just a few of the ways that people are being scammed into cashing fake money orders. As we discover these tricks, scammers will move on to another medium. The one common denominator that everybody should be aware of is the fake postal money order. These money orders are almost always for amounts between $900 and $1,000. Anyone doing business online should be extremely cautious when a transaction involves postal money orders. If the sender is asking for a portion of the cashed money order back, the money orders are most likely fake, and you may be held responsible for the lost revenue associated with cashing a fake money order.

Please feel free to contact the post office, or call the postal inspection service directly at 1-877-876-2455 if you believe you may have been presented with fake postal money orders.

As indicated in the message, Mountain Home residents have increasingly fallen prey to these scams. We have one specific local resident who continues to drain his bank account and send money off to wherever he is told even after I have pleaded with him to consider that he is being scammed. Unfortunately, with the scams originating in foreign countries, we (postal inspection and law enforcement) can do little to nothing about stopping these tyrants from manipulating innocent people.

The only way we can do to prevent more Mountain Home residents from falling into this trap is to arm them with the information necessary to avoid it. I hope you will consider presenting them with that information. Thank you.

-- Dan Day, Mountain Home postmaster