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Lt Kluttz said an Iron Station woman was convinced she was in love with a person she met on the internet who pretended to be a mid level management person working in a foreign country. That person eventually approached the woman in Iron Station about shipping some items to England. The imposter went so far as to set up a business web site with the Iron Station address but phone numbers that contained the wrong area code and e-mail addresses in Nigeria. The person then placed a large computer printer order with a company in Texas.
USA Impact LLC was given several different credit card numbers that were apparently stolen and some were used to ship about five thousand dollars worth of printers to the Iron Station home. The resident was supposed to ship them on to England but the company contacted the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office about the shipment and stolen credit cards.
Printers are stacked up in an Iron Station home.
Lt Kluttz said he was able to go the residence and stop the shipment before it could be forwarded on to England. The items were recovered and returned to the company.
That was in June 2006.
Then in June of this year, a Long Shoals woman agreed to forward items to another person overseas that she had met on the Internet. That was also a Nigerian scam and the company also contacted the Sheriff’s Office and those items including valuable postage machines and high dollar cell phones valued at three thousand dollars, were recovered.
In August 2007, a man on Lingerfelt Road in Vale also got caught up the scheme with someone he met on the Internet. The two thousand dollars worth of items, including golfing equipment, were purchased with stolen credit card numbers and shipped to his residence. He reported the incident to the Sheriff’s Office and the items were recovered.
Lt. Kluttz wants to make residents aware of the scam artists. He said in each case the people believed the person they were talking to or met on these dating web sites were
interested in becoming romantically involved with them. They would say all the right things and promise them everything over the Internet when they were in fact Nigerians scam artists. He said people should use extreme caution when dealing with people on web sites because they don’t know the person. In no case should a person accept a shipment from these individuals because that could lead to charges of accessory after the fact.
Although officers are aware of the three individuals who were caught up in the scheme, there may be others who have gone through with the requests from their so-called Internet connections.
These Nigerian scam artists are operating outside the USA and are hard to prosecute. They leave the persons here holding the bag once the scam is uncovered.
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