Katz received a text message from a person seeking to get married, and he and his staff responded to the message, asking the person to make a $120 down payment for the wedding services.
Everything seemed routine, until the check came in the mail and Katz noticed that something odd was happening.
“I knew this was a scam,” he said. “I had received messages from two of my business contacts in the industry telling me they had experienced text messages just like this one.”
The person sending the text messages said she was mute and could only communicate through text, according to Katz.
The charge was supposed to be $120, but instead, Katz was given a check for $1,370.89. The name on the check was a New York-based company called Professional Testing Corporation.
The person who sent the check asked Katz to return the remaining $1,250.89 via check deposit to a Wells Fargo bank account under the name Loveth Alabi.
Katz called Professional Testing Corporation, where a representative said he was the fifth person to contact the service about a fake check.
Professional Testing Corporation was unwilling to comment to the Signal Tribune about the potential scam incident, but it did confirm that checks were stolen and representatives had filed a report with the FBI.
An expert in fraud attempts similar to the one Katz underwent, Gregg McMullen, detective/terrorism liaison officer with the Long Beach Police Department, said that there are hundreds of variations of the “wedding check” fraud.
He said criminals do not discriminate against specific ethnic groups and that everyone is at risk on a day-to-day basis.
“No one is immune to financial crime,” McMullen stated. “Internet fraud is really prevalent at the moment.”
The detective said romance scams and CEO frauds are on the rise in Long Beach and surrounding cities. Romance scams use courtship as a way to take money from someone. “They trick you into thinking you are going to meet someone over the Internet,” he said. “But, really, you aren’t.”
CEO fraud not only targets large companies, but small and local businesses are at risk as well. For example, the person attempting fraud sends an email to a company’s accounting office, tricking the staff into thinking the CEO of the company is asking for funds to be sent to a specific account.
McMullen said that the email address usually looks very similar to a legitimate one, however, there is a slight letter change in the name of the address. For example, if the email address contains a ‘B’, the person attempting fraud can change that capital B into an ‘8’.
A popular target for scammers is the elderly in the community. Scamsters attempt to pry money from them by posing as a potential friend, using the possibility of friendship as a way into their bank accounts. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much for the fraud attempt to be successful.
Another trick a con artist will use is making an elderly person think his or her grandchildren are in a state of despair and require money to get out of it.
“For instance, what they’ll do is call someone and say, ‘Hey, Grandma, I’m arrested in Tijuana and need bail money to get out. Could you send some money please?'” McMullen said.
A massive amount of scamming attempts originate from outside the American borders. The detective was unable to disclose all the countries where fraud attempts come from, but Canada and Spain are two he was able to divulge.
According to McMullen, con artists from these two countries are heavily invested in a fraud he calls the lottery sweepstakes scam. McMullen’s investigation of the crime suggests that this scam targets individuals from the ages of 60 to 90 years.
“I’ve been to houses where elderly couples have mountains of paperwork stacked high in their homes from these lottery scams asking for personal information and money,” he said.
According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, last year, in total, $5,531,693.17 was lost as a result of fraud. The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported that $1,070,711,522 was lost last year, with March recording 25,747 fraud complaints— the highest recorded number in the year.
Although they’re typically thought to be tech-savvy, college students also run the risk of getting scammed online. McMullen explained that individuals from the age of 21 to 35 are at risk of the “working at home” scam. Con artists look for online résumés of college students and message them, explaining that the job-seekers have landed a job with a company and the scammers need their bank account information to send a paycheck in advance.
Although fraud attempts are happening all over the United States, California is the No.1 state for Internet crime victims, according to the IC3. A website called privacyrights.org keeps an updated record of security breaches all around the country, including reports of Russian hackers breaching the Arizona State Board of Elections in Pheonix and the leaking of user-sensitive information from the pornography website Brazzers.com.
Ricardo Oliveras, Signal Hill Police Department watch commander sergeant, was once in charge of investigating criminal fraud and identity theft. He said that during the holidays and after natural disasters, fraud crimes increase because con artists pose as fake charity groups in an attempt to take money from individuals. Scamsters seek to capitalize on national disasters like the flooding that occurred in Texas. He said that financial embezzlement cannot be avoided, but people can take steps to deter it.
“You have to shred your documents,” Oliveras said. “Any personal information like an address or a Social Security number has to be shredded.”
When browsing the Internet or making online payments, it is wise to look at the URL in the browser and make sure there is a green lock icon and the website address reads ‘https’, he said. The ‘s’ signifies that the website is secure and not a fake one created by a scamster.
Unfortunately, miscommunication between witnesses and authorities often results in con artists walking free again, Oliveras said.
“It’s like a cancer,” he said, “and the crooks know about it.”
McMullen suggests that people analyze their bank accounts on a daily basis and report any strange transactions.
“My card was just compromised yesterday,” he said. “I looked at the items [scammers] tried to buy, like phones and GPS [units], and told my bank, ‘I didn’t buy those items.'”
Authorities ask fraud victims to make a report to local agencies as quickly as possible, like Katz did when he almost fell victim to the wedding check embezzlement.
“Knowing it was a scam, I decided to mess with this person,” he said. “I told him, ‘OK, I’ll send my new intern with the remaining $1,250.89 check to the bank.’ Then I messaged him back and said, ‘Oh, no! My intern seems to have run away with the money.'”
The person attempting to financially scam Katz asked what he was going to do to get the money back.
“I told him, ‘Listen, I know this is all fake,” he said, “and I’ll have you know I made a report with the FBI. So, good luck.'”
Katz said the person never messaged him again.
