Freelance writer Diane Lohsi of Aumsville was looking for a part-time job to help pay the bills in late February, instead she found an adventure as an investigator exposing a scam that has taken numerous people throughout the country.
Her initiation into the work of a private eye began when she picked up an issue of the Statesman Journal and looked down the job opportunities column in the classified section, Lohsi said. She quickly focused in on a job that would let her create her own schedule and work from home.
The job, she learned as she conducted her own telephone research, was as a secret shopper who would collect information for a Canadian company called World Marketing Research.
Her telephone interview went well and the responsibilities sounded reasonable. Lohsi was asked for the usual information a company would need to hire her: her social security number, address and so on.
“They said they were going to do a credit check to see if I could be trusted with company funds because on some assignments you would purchase things and they would pay you back for that,” Lohsi said. “They took my phone number and said they would call me back.”
The company did call her back just a few days later and informed her she was hired and her first assignment had been shipped out by U.S. Postal Express Mail.
Within the week she had the letter.
Inside was an official code of ethics statement and an assignment on letterhead that read “World Marketing Research” and was signed by “program director Linda Pino.”
Lohsi’s assignment read: “You will pose as a potential customer sending a MoneyGram payment to a relative of yours in Ontario, Canada. The funds needed to comment have been arranged and is attached with this letter.”
What was attached was a cashier’s check, drawn on the Fifth Third Bank of Lexington, Ky., in the amount of $2,384. The “relative” she was to send the money to was someone with a name similar to her own at an Ontario, Canada address.
Lohsi was to cash the check and send $2,100 to her “relative.” The MoneyGram fees came to $84 and Lohsi would keep the $200 balance as payment for the assignment.
The assignment seemed too good to be true, Lohsi thought, and she would quickly find out it was. A couple of things just didn’t seem right about her new job. The program director had not actually signed the document, just a type written page with the name, Linda Pino. And $200 for such an easy assignment seemed a little too generous to Lohsi.
So, Lohsi went to her bank, Oregon Employees Credit Union, to verify the funds for the cashier’s check. She talked to cashier Debra Odom of South Salem, well known at the bank as being a fraud-finding wizard, who immediately referred her to the bank’s CEO and President, Kevin Cole.
The banker/detective duo immediately called the phone number for Fifth Third Bank. There they encountered a phone tree that led them to a real person who informed them that the check was a valid item with funds available. Normally, research would have ended there, bankers satisfied and customers assured. But Lohsi and Cole looked at one another and shook their heads.
So, he and Lohsi got online and found the Web site for the Fifth Third Bank of Lexington, Ky.
The phone number was different than the one on the check.
Using the new number found on the Web site, they contacted the bank’s fraud department and were informed that although the account existed, it was empty, the check was counterfeit, and several people already had tried to cash checks on the account.
“It was really a good scam in that they had the phone tree set up,” said Cole. “This is the first one we’ve seen like that. It was one of the best put-together scams that I’ve seen and I’ve been in financial institutions for over 10 years.”
Cole credits the catch to the critical thinking of Lohsi and Odom’s uncanny ability to spot potential fraud and give him the ‘heads up.’
“It was a very good counterfeit cashier’s check, but Debra Odom is very good at identifying counterfeit or forged items. She just has this unbelievable knack for identifying these things. This is the third or fourth one in the last year that she’s been able to identify,” he said.
If Lohsi had not had her suspicions, and Odom not seconded them, and Cole not taken the time to double check on the Web, Lohsi’s account would have been tapped for $2,384 — as apparently others elsewhere in the U.S. have been.
“We would have had to collect the money from her (when the cashier’s check bounced),” Cole explained.” Normally in a situation like that we give our members a lot of latitude in repayment – but account holders are responsible for any items deposited to the account.”
Newspapers try to protect their readers from such fraud by being suspicious, too.
The Statesman Journal has a policy to protect readers from such scams, requiring that all job opportunity advertisements be paid with a cashier’s check. The publication also warns readers to be wary of scams. The ad that Lohsi responded to had been paid with a cashier’s check — but that check bounced, too, and the Statesman Journal immediately pulled the ad.
“Business opportunity ads must be paid for with cashier’s checks and that usually stops (scammers) right there,” said Statesman Journal Inside Classified Advertising Manager Gregg Walters. “This is the first time we’ve seen a forged cashier’s check.”
Lohsi dodged a bullet with the help of her banker, but she didn’t just take a big breath and figure, “lesson learned.” She took further action to protect others from this clever scam.
She contacted Merly Ogden, enforcement Officer for the Oregon Department of Justice, she called the FBI and made a full report, she went to the post office and informed them so that they could put out an alert on the express posts coming from the Canadian address of World Marketing Research, she called the credit bureaus and flagged her own accounts there and called her credit companies and flagged those accounts, and she contacted the Aumsville Police Department and made a formal report.
Most people don’t take all those steps, said Aumsville Chief of Police Michael Andall.
“Of course they want to talk to the police department immediately if for no other reason than that gets the information out to any other people who may be potential victims,” Andall said. “Lohsi was also instructed to contact the credit bureaus – that’s one of the more important things to do and I think people often don’t do that believing once they contacted the police there isn’t anything else the need to do.”
Jan Margosian, spokesman for the Attourney General’s office, seconded Andall’s assessment.
“Hurrah for Lohsi!” Margosian said. “It sounds like she did all the right things and that’s very good. Both U.S. Postal checks and cashiers checks are counterfeited these days and consumers and banks are victims. These are amazingly well-done counterfeits and you end up with banks and consumers being caught.”
Even legitimate companies can be swept into intricate scams when scammers use a company’s identity and issue false checks on phony accounts in the company’s name.
It’s not always just a case of “if it sounds too good to be true, it isn’t,” officials warn. “This is the first one of this secret-shopper job that we’ve seen,” Andall said. “These individuals had gone through enough trouble to direct her to go to a specific store and tell her what that would cost her. Even from our perspective, this was not one of those ‘here’s a check for $20 million.’”
That’s why, when it comes to protecting your identity, it is not just careful scrutiny before the fact, but fast action after the fact that counts, Margosian said.
“The big key is speed, you cannot hesitate,” she said. “You want to get to the three credit agencies and get a consumer alert on those, immediately,” she said. “And, I think it’s very important to file the complaint with both your local police and with the attorney general.”
Don’t “let it go” if you foil a scam, either, Morgosian advised. The information you provide to agencies is still important.
In Lohsi’s case, since she avoided the scam, the FBI informed her that her report would go in a “zero” file indicating no money lost and therefore no action taken, but that file would be pulled out if another report came in with a loss to a consumer — and Lohsi’s story would be added to the report to strengthen a case.
The scammers were not only very sophisticated, they were bold, Lohsi said. After she and her banker identified the check as false, she received another call from World Marketing Research.
“When I got home, on my message machine was a message from Jessica, the lady who called and said I had been approved and sent out my packet, saying I’m glad you got your packet, please call me back.”
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