So I met up with King Sheep last night for a rare evening of theater and amazingly good garlic cheese bread (if there is a Keg restaurant near you, stop reading and go now). It’s rare because we live a good 300 miles apart, so popping by for a quick visit requires a little more than a slow afternoon and 15 minutes of spare time. It requires planning, coordination, and the occasional misdemeanor moving violation. What did we see at ye olde theatre? Jumper. Review is forthcoming. I promise. Moving on.

What I’m really writing about is a wonderful event that seems to be worming its way into my work life as a Friday morning perodical. For the dozen people on this blog who don’t know me personally, I spend my daylight hours as a manager in a press shop, and one of my main duties is e-mail management. A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a reverend who urgently needed 10,000 full-color flyers printed. After excitedly working up a quote and going back-and-forth over the e-mail with him, I find out that he wants the flyers shipped to West Africa via a very specific shipping company. Call me thick, but that was what finally set off the alarm. I Google the shipping company’s name and discover it’s a scam.

It works like this: Joe Printer makes 10,000 flyers and gives them to the shipper. The shipper requires a money order to do business. The reverend tells the printer to roll the cost of shipping into his bill, which he pays with a credit card, which turns out to be fake. Printer is now out a couple grand plus labor, paper, and ink.

The “reverend” has tried e-mailing me several times since then using different names but always asking for immense quantities of flyers, and it always starts like this:

———

Hello Sir/Madam
Goodmorning and My Name Is Mr Walton Smith and am the Owner of Smith & Company Inc, I Am Contacting you to Know if you can make an Order for same Flyers .and i will need the Qty 90,500 with the size of 8.5”x11” in full copies Black Ink on Yellow Paper l want you to write of the flyer (Smith & Company Inc).,I want you to go ahead and quote me the total pick up prices plus tax without shipping,and also addvice me the methods of payment that you accpet so that as soon as i get the price here i will go ahead and make the payment for you right away , so that we can schdule for the pick up whe it is ready for pick up. so that i can get back to you as soon as i can .Try and get back to me with your Name and Phone Number.

Thank you and hope to hear again back from you..
….

Best Regards.
Mr.Walton

Reverend. Moore

——–

Incidentally, the name of the shipping company is always Federf Cargo and Trading Company. Another thing this scammer does it use a TTY connection or phone relay to send his order. If you’ve been contacted with a similar message, report the phone number or e-mail address and let’s try to get these guys caught.

Peach out.