Telemarketing Scam aimed at libraries

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

>From the Chronicle of Higher Education 
>From the issue dated February 25, 2005
College Libraries Are New Targets of Telemarketing Scams
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARIES AND ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS around the country
   have recently been hit with a new type of telemarketing scam.
   In a typical case, a telemarketer calls during off hours, in
   hopes of reaching a lower-level employee, and says he needs
   to confirm an address. But after the address is confirmed,
   the telemarketer says, "So this is where we should send the
   directory?" If the library employee says yes, the library
   will get a bill.
   --> SEE http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i25/25a03401.htm
(requires subscription)

Rick Anderson, a librarian at the University of Nevada at Reno, says he
was suspicious when he got a call demanding that the library pay for a
business directory he had never heard of. The woman on the line demanded
to speak to the university's lawyer. His suspicions deepened when the
caller, who said she was from a company called Pentium Capital, would not
give her full name, identifying herself only as "Ms. Larson."

He pressed her for more information, and he did get a phone number before
she got huffy.

"Are you refusing to give me the name of your attorney?" she said. Then
she said she'd see him in court and hung up.

Mr. Anderson, who has received calls like this several times in the past,
says the call fit the pattern of a type of telemarketing scam that has
recently hit college libraries and academic departments around the
country. ..

"They will tape record the end of the conversation, during which they go
through a script," says Todd M. Kossow, a staff lawyer for the Federal
Trade Commission. "Once they send the organization an invoice, they will
indicate that they have someone on tape who ordered it."

Telemarketers might also say that they are merely confirming the renewal
of a subscription when no subscription exists, he says. Or a company might
send an invoice that is made to look like something the library might have
ordered. A call for money might come from a "collection agency," but that
agency is typically a front for the main operation

....