NDA scams

[dilligaf]

A few weeks ago one of our rural drivers started picking up a resi customer who was sending out NDA's. At first it was about 20 a day. She was, obviously really excited about getting the revenue. The shipper claimed that he would be sending about 200 a week. Because we have been implementing PAS this last 2 weeks and have had sups on truck helping us get PAS problems worked out, they caught a very big fraud scheme very early.

Tues, a sup went out on rte with the driver and when she went to pick up the air the sup started questioning what was going on. There were 76 NDA that day. It was pure coincidence that this was caught so early.

Here's the scenario as it was explained to us yesterday. A person responds to a work at home add in their newspaper. All materials needed are sent to them. The person then spends his/her time addressing ASD labels. They are given specific instruction as to how to do this. They are using fictious acct #'s,. On the first few ASD's the shipper will hand write in a return addy but after that there is no return addy. They put those peel and stick address labels on the top copy. All copies of shipping documents are pre-bundled to make it 'easier' for the driver. IE: The driver is less likely to notice that there is no return addr. Scan and run. The letters may even be pre-bundled. Again to make it easier for the driver.

This scam is originating out of England. They are targeting rural areas because we tend to not have the checks and balances that larger ctrs have. It is easier to go unnoticed. These people that are responding to the work at home adds have no idea this is a scam. We were not told how the actual scam works other than these people are shipping out fake checks.

There was a big hooha here when they discovered this. I know we as drivers mostly trust our customers. I do. But beware..........if you notice this type of activity report it. As far as what is going to happen to this customer I don't know.

It was just sheer coincidence that our ctr didn't get hit harder than what we did. Just because of timing.

 

[CFLBrown]

Excessive amounts of hand written ASD's would throw up a flag for me. It's one thing if it's a shipper that always ships out NDA and they had a problem w/ the label printer or ran out of supplies.

Excessive amounts of letters dumped in letter boxes sent EAM or NDA are another flag. Very easy to catch, if you bring them to mgmt's attention and they fly and are legit, it's not your problem anymore.

 

[Dizzee]

A couple of years ago, I started getting a few EAMs out of a letter box every couple of days. Over the course of a few weeks this grew to a dozen at a time. All hand written ASDs. And the shipper started using a P.O. box for the return address. I talked with LP, and told them something was fishy with this shipper. I remembered the guys address from the original few he had shipped, that had his return address on them.

It turns out, the guy was using a closed account number (not his), to ship baseball cards that he was selling on EBay. Not expensive cards, but, cards that were selling for 2 or 3 dollars apiece.

Towards the end, he was shipping out 10 or so EAMs a day.
10 x $50+ = $500+ a day in shipping cost.
He was making a whopping $20 to $30 a day, in EBay sales.

All of his EBay listings stated,
"As Always, Priority Shipping is Included for Free!"
He had great feedback on EBay for all of his past auctions.

My reward for saving the company $500 a day? A $10 tiny remote control package car.

 

[nobber]

The bogus check scam has been going on for a few years now. They also open accounts with stolen credit card numbers, ship out hundreds mostly in letter boxes. The consignees get the checks or money orders. Cash them and wire the money to the bad guys. a few days later their bank tells them they had a bad check and want the money back. The unsuspecting consignees are usually contacted orig by chat sites on the internet. The fake checks and money orders are of high quality. I have had thousands of these checks over the last couple years. So the next time you pick up a letter box and it contains 100 NDA letters from the same shipper, have someone at the center check it out, have them call security

 

[scratch]

I used to deliver these fake checks doing EAMs all the time. The return address, the check address, and the tracking numbers would all be from different states. These scams will involve the scammers using the internet and prepaid phones to contact their victims. The fake checks will usually be for about three thousand dollars. One of the scams is telling the victim they won some money and they need to deposit these checks right away. They are phishing for bank account numbers. Another type of scam is they are mailing these fake checks in an effort to get the victim to mail back a legitimate check.

I had a lady on my route that was a victim of one of these scammers. Somehow her credit card number was stolen and it was used to set up a shipping account and ship hundreds of NDA Letters. I started getting some of these that were refused or had bad addresses being returned to her house. This is when she first became aware of the problem. I told my Center Manager I had at the time and was instructed to just leave these returns in the Center in the morning. They were turned over to LP and nothing was done about it as far as I know. The lady on my area was never contacted by UPS and had to dispute the charges with her credit card company.

It would seem to me that when we found out about these scams, a Delivery Intercept could be put on these accounts and put a stop to this. UPS is being ripped off too for theft of our services, there is no telling how much we lose on these things.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

We had a rash of these addressed to students and instructors at our local colllege. Somehow the scammers had accessed the university e-mail listing and, before UPS figured out what was going on, we (I) had delivered around 100 or so. No students were duped but there was a local vice principal who took the money order to WalMart to show them but he made the mistake of endorsing it and that landed him in a world of trouble with the State Police and, if I am not mistaken, I believe he may have lost his job over this.

You would think with all of the media coverage on these scams that people would have learned by now that if it looks too good to be true it probably isn't.

 

[gandydancer]

[

... I told my Center Manager I had at the time and was instructed to just leave these returns in the Center in the morning. They were turned over to LP and nothing was done about it as far as I know. The lady on my area was never contacted by UPS and had to dispute the charges with her credit card company.

It would seem to me that when we found out about these scams, a Delivery Intercept could be put on these accounts and put a stop to this. UPS is being ripped off too for theft of our services, there is no telling how much we lose on these things.

There was another thread by some clueless salesguy saying that if all the drivers genned up sales leads we wouldn't have any layoffs. My response was that the target rich environment for increasing profitability (and hence get greater volume through lower prices) was INSIDE UPS.

QED, again.

 

[trplnkl]

Recently we had two of the fake check, fake shipper numbers letters in our post card room with bad addresses. As I was researching trying to fins a good address I opened them looking for phone numbers and found (in each) the check for $3K to $3.5K., it looked fishy to me so I handed them over to LP.

 

[ol'browneye]

Here is a scam to look out for...

I was selling an electric stove on craigslist for $150. I got an e-mail saying this guy really wanted it but was out of the country. He would give me $250 if I held it for him and his sectretary would send me a check.

My first thought was "Why would you offer me more than what I was asking?" and secondly "If you are so well off that you travel out of the country and have a secretary, why do you want on old stove?" I just ignored the e-mail but couldn't quite figure out the angle of the scam.

Ends up the scam goes like this: You agree to a price more than what you were asking for, for whatever reason. They send you a cashier's check for let's say $2000 instead of the $300 agreed upon, for some made up reason, and they ask you to wire the difference back to them after you cash it. After they have your money, your bank figures out the check is fake and you are responsible for the $2000 and the scammer has $1700 of it. I don't know why but Western Union wired money is gone for good once the transactin is complete and you are screwed! And these checks are sent UPS so it isn't considered mail fraud and they are using bogus account numbers and are getting the shipping for free.

It wasn't long after this that I delivered a nda letter to a guy (and of course it was a puller) and he commented he was selling puppies on craigslist and someone wanted to pay him double what he was asking. It turned out the check was in the nda letter. I told him about the scam and said that the check was probably alot more money than he had agreed to. He opened it and sure enough, it was $1600 more! He tore it up and thanked me.

 

[trplnkl]

Browneye, that's the Nigerian scam that they talk about so much. Craig's list has ton's of them floating around just hoping the next victim doesn't run into you.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

P.T.Barnum said it best when he said "There is a sucker born every day." These scams wouldn't persist if there weren't people willing to be duped by them.

 

[ol'browneye]

Last summer I had a customer start getting some nda boxes pretty frequently. This area was sometimes split off my route so I didn't see it everyday. Comparing notes with the other driver we found out most of his boxes were coming with the address # just a little off. Numbers reversed or 4 digits instead of 3, things like that. We knew where they went so we delivered them and used the "address correction" button in the diad.

One day the customer got 8 nda boxes all from the same place, all had the name just a little different and all the addresses were just a little off. I called supe about it and told her of my suspicions and she told me to sheet them all NSN and send them in. The next day he got 10 of these boxes with all the same discrepancies. I was told to NSN them and send them in. That was the last I saw of them and got no more.

Found out later that the guy was ordering shoes and electronics with stolen credit card #'s and by changing the names and addresses just a little he thought he wouldn't get caught.

One every once in a while and we may never have caught on but the guy got greedy and ordered too much at one time. There is probably a lot more of this going on than we will ever know.

 

[705red]

Last year we had a customer open up a store front and over a two week period received certified check cods. These checks where perfect! Three drivers accepted these checks and by the time ups found out he had closed up shop and disappeared. Now we have three drivers on the hook for close to $50,000 a piece. I believe this is going through arbitration. I will make a few calls to see.

 

[ol'browneye]

Last year we had a customer open up a store front and over a two week period received certified check cods. These checks where perfect! Three drivers accepted these checks and by the time ups found out he had closed up shop and disappeared. Now we have three drivers on the hook for close to $50,000 a piece. I believe this is going through arbitration. I will make a few calls to see.

I don't have my contract book in front of me but doesn't it say something to the affect that if the check is one that any reasonable person would have accepted, (in other words-looks real), the driver won't be held responsible?

 

[brett636]

We have had that same issue here in my area. As an air driver I find them in my letter boxes on occasion. For awhile I was finding 50-100 of them in a couple of my boxes. They are not hard to pick out, and I turn them over to LP whenever I find them.

 

[705red]

I don't have my contract book in front of me but doesn't it say something to the affect that if the check is one that any reasonable person would have accepted, (in other words-looks real), the driver won't be held responsible?

Absolutely! Its amazing how far apart labor and the union can be on with simple language! If 3 drivers excepted the same checks, plus hundreds of drivers that signed a petition to say that they would have excepted the same check. ??????????????????

 

[dilligaf]

Last year we had a customer open up a store front and over a two week period received certified check cods. These checks where perfect! Three drivers accepted these checks and by the time ups found out he had closed up shop and disappeared. Now we have three drivers on the hook for close to $50,000 a piece. I believe this is going through arbitration. I will make a few calls to see.

OUCH!!!!! not what I wanted to say, but it will suffice. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to know that a check is bad? This is just plain crazy. Maybe you can answer a question that I just thought of. Do we as drivers have the right to refuse to accept a personal check? I know the shipper can designate personal check or money order. Let's assume that the shipper will accept a personal check. I go to a customer and I smell something fishie, can I refuse to accept a personal check?

 

[greeny]

I had just returned to work from knee surgery and had 30 days of light duty [TAW]. I would del. airs and then a couple of bulk stops. one day i had the on road sup with me and we had 175 cod's cash only for a stop. we get there and the store is empty just 1 guy with a certified check.i tell the sup its no good they dont issue cert. chks in fl. he tells me to del them,so i put his name on the del. records.when we were halfway done i went next door and got some water at 7/11.i also called lp and they sent someone out.we finished unloading and i told the cust. as soon as the lp sup came out and verified the ck. he could have his stuff.he said ok and offered us some more water he went to 7/11 to get some.he went out and just ran away,i told the sup if he thought the ck. was still good.then lp came ck was counterfit.when i told lp sup. that the on road made me unload them,he had a great idea he told my sup to reload them back into the pc i got to sit and watch.ck amt. was 18,000.00. i got a reward for 100.00 and watching my sup reload 175 boxes was a bonus.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Dilli, if you feel in your gut that something just ain't right, you most certainly have the right to not accept the personal check; however, I would most definitely call mgt and run it by them first (in the pkg car away from the consignee). If you are directed by mgt to accept payment, simply note that in the remarks column and complete the delivery. I would be hesitant to make that call on your own.

Going back to what red said, the drivers should not be held responsible for accepting what each of them determined to be legitimate checks. We are not bankers nor have we been trained in that field. It would have been one thing if one driver had accepted these checks but to have 3 drivers accept these checks should tell you that the checks did indeed appear to be legitimate. Short of installing CheckSecure or some other software on our DIADs, perhaps we should simply stop collecting anything other than certified funds but, as in the thread on NDA scams has shown, cashier checks can be counterfeit. I am hesitant to suggest that the company install credit card software in to our DIADs but do see the day where this will become reality as more and more people are going cash-less and using plastic. At 3 minutes per COD pkg there simply is not enough time allowance given to have to deal with these issues. On a positive note, I have noticed a decline in the number of CODs that I deliver. I think part of that is we keep increasing the COD charge and consignees are beginning to realize that if they put it on their credit card and pay off the balance each month they are actually saving money.

 

[scratch]

These "fake" checks are usually printed by a legitimate check printing company. Anybody can order checks and have a fake company and account number put on them. Sometimes the scammers will steal a legitimate account number off a business check and use that until that company figures out the scam and cancels the account. Bankers can't tell they are fake either, until they try to run them through. I have a couple of banker friends and they have stacks of these. The amounts are under $5000 and are considered too small to investigate and prosecute.