Posted on 06/15/2006 12:48:00 PM PDT by lilylangtree
The African men wooed the disabled woman over the Internet for several months, then asked Sheryl Sandberg for a favor.
The men sent her a package containing money orders, checks from foreign banks, cashier's checks and traveler's checks, and asked her to distribute the items via Federal Express and U.S. mail to 80 people.
Sandberg agreed. After all, three of the four men she talked to via Yahoo's instant messaging had promised to move to Spokane and marry the 52-year-old. They called her "honey."
"They tried to sweet-talk their way in," Sandberg said.
The first package arrived with prewritten labels for the 80 recipients. And Sandberg sent them out.
When the Spokane woman received the second package containing about $250,000 in checks, and a request to fill out the addresses herself, she figured something wasn't right.
Sandberg took the package to the Shadle COPS shop and told the volunteer she wanted to talk to a police detective.
It's called "the shipping scam," said Spokane Polict Sgt. Jason Hartman. The scammers often target vulnerable, lonely people as "middle men" to carry out the plan.
One of the checks was for nearly $20,000, detectives said. One of the men told Sandberg to cash it, take $1,000 for herself and send the rest back to them by Western Union.
If she had cashed the check, the bank would have gone after her for the money, said John Weber, vice president security officer for Washington Trust Bank.
Much of the scam is done by sending people traveler's checks and money orders, some with legitimate items for sale in newspaper classifieds or online, detectives explained. The checks are often worth more than the value of the item. The instructions are for the person to take what's owed to them and send the rest of the money back to them. Then the victim gets stuck when the check bounces.
Officials said they don't know how many people became victims due to the first mailing, which went out to 80 people all over the United States and Canada.
Spokane Police Detective Stacey Carr has been trying to contact as many of the potential victims as possible. So far, she's spoken with people in Idaho, Colorado and Wisconsin.
About all law enforcement can do is warn people. Even if Spokane law enforcement can figure out who the men are, there is little they can do because the men are in another country.
Carr was gratefull to Sandberg for being alert about the second package of checks that arrived.
"I feel good to a certain extent," Sandberg said. "But I am still angry and upset."
Sandberg first met the men while she was playing cribbage online at Yahoo, she said. Then they quit playing and went to instant messaging, she said. Sandberg had a Web cam they would ask her to turn on while she was chatting.
That's one way to make sure they aren't talking to law enforcement, Carr said.
The four men are still trying to contact Sandberg despite her telling them she knew that what they did was illegal.
Sandberg has changed her phone number because the men have started to threaten her.
Fortunately suckers aren't common among the population of FRee Republic.
Three easy rules to follow:
1) ignore all unsolicited financial advice regardless of the source,
2) ignore all communications from Africa, regardless of the subject,
3) if it sounds too good to be true, it is.
Who FALLS for this crap??? Greedy fools.
Hey, how'd you get a picture of my wife???
I received two checks from Canada...One was for a little over 6,000 and the other was over 70,000...
Same deal but I could keep the Lions's share of the cash...The bank president checked them out...The checks were legit on this end...But he said there was nothing there at the other end...
And I already had the color of my new truck picked out...
It's the financial equivalent of Lucy holding the football
Good thing you checked it out. Smart move!
Yes...The Bank President told me that had I just deposited the checks, my accounts could have been frozen for months while the bank tried to work things out...
Wadda you mean, your wife?
There ya go...
Does this mean that the offer to forward me $22 million dollars from Lesotho is no good?
Damn.
OK, I know there was a thread that explained the origins of that picture... can you post the link so I can refresh my memory? *chuckle*
Thanks for sharing. If more people become aware of scams like this, that's one less victim especially among freepers.
Good times. Good times.
I don't think "greedy" was the problem in this particular case. She went to police as soon as she realized something wasn't right. "Not the sharpest tool in the shed" would be an understatement.
She only went to the police with the SECOND shipment!!
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