March 6, 2009
-
News: Nation-wide Scheme Tracked to So. Florida.
A recent marketing scheme has been exposed and tracked down to a few South Florida ‘borderliners'. The scheme involves a few local businesses sending mailers all over the country with the, apparent, purpose of culling credit card numbers. States like New Mexico, Minnesota and Illinois have been targeted. Designed to look official, these "parcel tracking notices" show up in the mail with return addresses routing to Ft. Myers and Naples, FL zip codes. The solicitation channels the recipients to accept a "prepaid" shipment and claim it by covering postage (only payable in the form of credit cards). Not by accident, the postcard is designed to look like a U.S. Postal Service receipt request for postage (complete with the same government green color). The significant difference here is the requirement to pay with credit card.
The outright deception here states: "A parcel has been reserved in your name." There's a ‘tracking number' assigned and a stamp that says: "Article for release. Reply is required within 7 days." The ‘prepaid' parcel isn't really prepaid at all and contains cheap jewelry. But the intended message is that is has been paid for and only needs to be picked up. ‘Picked up', in this case, means calling a toll-free number and placing the $6.95 delivery and processing charge on your credit card. Once a person calls the toll-free number, a different meaning is divulged. It is explained that the business which orchestrated the scheme actually wants to give away expensive gold jewelry, complete with diamonds for free. All the caller has to do is present a credit card for ‘shipping and handling'.
Now, it could just be that some two-bit peddlers from Naples, Italy (I once bought a ‘$100-watch there for $5. Ten minutes later, I had it evaluated to be worth $2.) have moved to Naples, FL. But, could it also be that selling that sensitive credit card data they cull has an even greater gain for them on the black market? After all, if it's legal to be dishonest, where do we draw the line? The two local marketing companies implementing these mailings are Southwest Direct Inc. in Fort Myers and Emerson Direct Inc. out of Naples, FL. If you see them, why not ask them what they're up to?