Fraud using deaf relay system strikes again

You may be suprised how often, as owners of a small business, we run into people who want to steal our money or products. Nigerian e-mail scams come and go and seem to target Joe Public. But we have had two recent scam attempts target our business, this time using Deaf Relay systems.

For those that don't know, this is a mainly anonymous, free service that allows hearing impared to communicate with any US phone number using a relay client. Well, scammers also use this service, hiding them from having to speak a word to the targeted business.

Today (November 22 2009), we get a call to our business using this relay service from someone who wanted to order 32 8 inch cakes "for a wedding". He wanted us to take some money as a tip and charge everything to a card. He gave his email address as "peterlawal@yahoo.com" (Google it and you should find this informative post. Ann, already aware of the previous time this happened, challenged him to e-mail us a copy of the front and back of the card as well as ID (to which we never heard from him again).

The link above explains how the scam works. They make a good point -- we are reluctant to accept any calls that use this service. This is not discrimination -- this is business. So if you are one of our deaf customers, please come in to place your order.

Incidentally, the previous time this happened (July 15 2009), it was from Jessica at jessica2710@yahoo.com who wanted us to send 100 chicken gyros and 100 diet cokes via carrier to New York (and "keep $500 for ourselves"). Um.... sure.

More proof that the world is going crazy.