April 15, 2007
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NEWS: Scam Victim Charged With Forgery
Kansas City nurse Shirley Tyus is breathing a bit easier after having had forgery charges against her dismissed by a Boone County prosecutor. Good news for anyone having a brush with the law, to be sure, but especially so for Tyus, who was definitely on the wrong end of a foreign lottery scam. Far from being the criminal mastermind behind such a racket, Tyus –like hundreds of thousands of hapless consumers annually- got taken for a ride by the scam, which she initially considered to be a "blessing."
When Tyus, 54, received word that she's won a profusion of overseas lotteries and was sent a batch of realistic-looking checks with which to pay the fees to collect her winnings, she had images of her five college-going daughters dancing in her head. Of course, the checks were phony, meaning that Tyus was just another sad story of a scam victim manipulated by phony documentation. But not so fast - prosecutors charged Tyus with forgery after police investigated her for supposedly passing bad checks.
While it's true that Tyus presented the checks at her credit union, it is also the case that the tellers cashed them without any intervention whatsoever. Tyus' case, say experts, just reinforces the clear need for education on the part of financial institution employees to help their customers avoid such scams. Tyus' story ended on a "no harm, no foul" note, but other consumers have been far from so lucky.