Sue McConnell, a crack sleuth at the Cleveland Better Business Bureau, figured she’d seen every low-rent scam imaginable. But she never thought she’d see the day when deaf people were doing the scheming.
Lester Sukenik, who owns Colony Lumber in Painesville, got a call from a service for the speech and hearing impaired. An operator talked while the man on the other end of the line typed what he wanted her to say. The man wanted to order $1,500 in lumber on a credit card and have it picked up and shipped to Ghana, a country whose construction industry is rivaled only by a bunch of guys sending e-mails asking you to wire them a million bucks.
“It was just suspicious from the beginning,” says Sukenik. Two days later he got another call, this time from a man with a heavy Middle-Eastern accent, wanting to know if the deal was on. Sukenik called the Better Business Bureau instead. He later found out that the man was using a stolen credit card.
McConnell says that, although the deaf thing may be a creative new angle, it’s just another play on an age old scam. “Maybe they feel someone would be compassionate,” she says. “They might get some sympathy factor out of somebody.” –Jared Klaus
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2006.
I am a relay operator for the deaf. We have these calls all the time. They are not made by the deaf. They are scams and originate on the internet and cannot be traced or verified as coming from someone deaf or speech disabled. The service is free and anyone can promote a scam or annoying calls because the
origin of the call cannot be traced-frequently these are from Africa (gathered from content and shipping addresses given). They are not using the service to gain sympathy per se’ though sometimes they will say they cannot deal with a business because they won’t talk to someone that is deaf. They use the service because their number cannot be traced and verified where they are calling from. This allows them to lie their head off!
They use stolen credit card numbers, fake cashiers checks etc. Because we cannot be involved in the calls except to type what the hearing person says and speak what the typing person enters, we cannot do anything about it. This is frustrating to us as well. All calls are confidential and not recorded or repeated-period.
These scams target everything from businesses to private individuals that put ads online or in a paper. The basic idea is to get someone to accept the fake or stolen payment and refund the difference between the cost and the amount they ‘send’– in good funds taken from the ‘marks’ account. The goods may or may not be actually shipped or picked up. If they do ship, they are sold black market etc. This scam using the relay service has been around for years and they are persistent.
Do a Google search on deaf relay scams and get an eye full!! Please do not shun the deaf community because the service they need to communicate with the hearing community is being ill used and abused. Calls from the deaf are required by law to be accepted by the business sector and the overwhelming majority of calls are legitimate. Just another good thing being horribly abused.