Tag: fraud

Posted in fraud

Almost scammed

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Since we scaled back our home-based cookie business, I’ve been trying to sell our Eddie edible ink printer. It’s an investment, but it prints amazing images on royal iced sugar cookies.

I listed it on a dedicated message board as well as a local online marketplace. I’ve sold lots of items there, just nothing this expensive.

Over the next few weeks, I got lowball offers which I rejected. I was offering a great price, so I wasn’t coming down much.

Then we got a phone call from a woman in Boise, Idaho. She asked if we had recently sold an edible ink printer. She saw our business information in a picture the equipment and tracked us down. A person in Eau Claire, Wisconsin had copied my photos and created a fake listing on Craigslist. If she had sent the money, it would be gone and she’d have no printer. She was wise to check it out.

Everything I sell is for local pickup. And it’s been working well. I list items, someone stops by with cash or sends money via Venmo and takes it home. But I hadn’t tried to sell any high priced items. Ten to twenty bucks at the most.

I wouldn’t try and box up the printer for shipping. I hadn’t kept any of the original packaging. Plus, it would be expensive.

I found the listing on Craigslist and reported the fraud. It was creepy. I felt violated. Craigslist is like the wild west of online shopping, rife with scams and lies. I wasn’t surprised that it showed up here. I was just surprised to find my item here.

No one is going to mess with a ten dollar bin of baby toys or Mr. Potato Head parts. But you get into the thousands of dollars and you better watch your back.

Posted in lessons, Life

A classic: the cookie scam

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Our cottage bakery got an email asking about a cookie order for a corporate event. Other bakers with similar businesses had described these larger-than-usual orders as the real moneymakers.

Our excitement turned to disbelief once we read his request: “25 dozen of a 4-pack of cookies of different flavors with the company logo printed on it.” I did the math and wondered, “Three hundred four-packs?” That’s 1,200 cookies!

Our three-and-a-half inch printed iced cookies start at $4.00 each. He going to spend $4,800 on cookies? That’s too much. Let’s offer 2-1/2 inch cookies at $2.50 each. It would still be a $3,000 order, but maybe that’s what he wants.

That offer was too much for the event budget. He countered, “How about twenty dozen cookies?”

We replied, “We can do 240 three-inch cookies for $3.00 each, a total of $720.”

He was happy with that order. So were we. That’s still a lot of cookies! Could we deliver to the conference venue in a neighboring town? We said we could.

I emailed him the invoice so we could start on the order. He replied, “Can I pay by e-check?” Of course. Our invoice takes you to a payment site with credit card and ACH options.

But his idea of an e-check was totally different than ours. He wanted to write out a check, take a picture of it, and email the picture to us so we could deposit it using our bank’s mobile deposit option.

Red alert! Defcon 5! Danger, Will Robinson! Are you kidding? There’s no way I’m doing that. A picture of a check does work like the real thing, as long as the bank clears it. There’s the catch. It takes up to a week for that kind of deposit to clear.

I learned that this is a set-up for fraud. Someone sends you a check for more than the agreed upon amount. All you have to do is send them a check for the overpayment. But when their check doesn’t clear, they disappear with whatever money you sent them.

I told him I could only take payment through our payment portal. He said he couldn’t do that, but looked forward to working with us in the future. When I looked him up on the corporate website, guess what? No such guy.

This all happened a few months ago. When I looked back at his emails, the first subject line “Cookies Enquiries” should have clued me in from the start. His request for different “flavours” should have tipped me off, too.

Apparently scams and fraud are business as usual for small businesses. Don’t ever let your guard down.