Tucson merchants have found that simple skepticism may be themost effective weapon against the latest scam to defraud them oftheir merchandise.
But if your critical side doesn't kick in, helpful operators maybe willing to risk their jobs to prevent you from large losses.
In this scam, callers from Africa use a free, Internet-basedrelay service intended to help American deaf people make phonecalls. Through a U.S.-based operator, the callers provide stolencredit card numbers and ask for immediate shipment of merchandise inlarge quantities.
But it's not necessary to hang up when an operator announces thatyou have a call using the telephone relay service for the deaf,merchants and operators said. Just hear out the callers for aminute, and, if it's a fraudulent call, their request is likely tobecome absurd fast.
Roh's, a home electronics store at 2922 N. Campbell Ave., hasreceived at least 10 relay calls that appeared to be fraudulent,assistant sales manager Shawn Polstom said.
"It's fairly obvious when you talk to them that something's notright," Polstom said. "They have no idea what it is they want, butthey want 10 of them."
Unfortunately for Ted Direnfeld, the scam was just starting backin December when he received a relay call at his shoe store, Dee'sShoes, 5764 E. Broadway. It was someone from Ghana wanting dozens ofpairs of women's shoes. Direnfeld took the credit card number,verified it with the card company, then processed the order.
Over a week in December, Direnfeld packaged two large shipmentsof shoes and sent them to a buyer in Ghana, he said. But soon afterhe dropped off the second shipment at FedEx, the credit-card companycalled him and said the card was stolen.
Direnfeld was able to get back both shipments of shoes, he said,even though one had already cleared customs in Ghana and was readyfor delivery. FedEx sent it back, he said.
Direnfeld found out the hard way that authorization of the cardnumber alone "means nothing."
"All it means is that credit card is good for that amount," hesaid.
In his case, Direnfeld said, the owner of the card had canceledit, but the cancellation had not been processed completely when hemade his sale to Ghana. The processing of the cancellation took afew days.
Some operators in Tucson and elsewhere have risked their jobs toprevent the fraudulent sales from going through.
Many of the Internet-relay calls go through operators working atthe Communication Service for the Deaf call center at FoothillsMall. The center helps hearing- and speech-impaired Americans makecalls.
But since January, the call center operators' workdays have beendominated by Internet calls from Nigeria and elsewhere. The centerwas processing at least 7,000 of the calls per day last month,according to a company memo, and thousands more calls were goingthrough centers in other parts of the country.
The operators often suspect fraud, but they can't just hang up.Federal regulations require the operators to relay all the phonecalls they receive and to keep the contents confidential. They aretrained to be human "wires" who receive written messages from thecaller, speak the words to the recipient, and vice versa.
But across the country, at the call centers that handle callsfrom supposedly deaf callers, a form of civil disobedience has beenspreading in which operators have been sabotaging fraud artists'efforts.
Paul Pronze said he worked at CSD, as the Northwest-Side callcenter is known, for five years until last month. By that time, hewas receiving almost exclusively fraudulent calls from people tryingto scam U.S. merchants.
"I'd hang up," Pronze said.
Near the end of March, supervisors caught him hanging up on acaller and called him in for possible discipline, Pronze said. Hequit.
"My thought was, I can't tell them I won't do it again; so Ifigured it's time to let it go," Pronze said.
Across the country relay operators have gone even further toprevent the fraud, said Rob Grodevant, a Madison, Wis., man whomoderates an Internet message board for relay operators. Forexample, operators have intentionally mixed up the numbers on creditcards provided by callers, so they come up as invalid when storemerchants process them, said Grodevant, himself a former relayoperators.
Other operators have even used their personal cellular phones tocall back and warn businesses that they had just called as operatorsof the potentially fraudulent call, he said. Others operators havecontacted credit card companies to report the card numbers they'veheard.
Contact reporter Tim Steller at 434-4086 or atsteller@azstarnet.com.
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