[00:00:00] We return with our regular season in September, but we thought we'd update you on some scams that have been going on this summer. Scams and Cons news will be a regular feature in season 5.
[00:00:11] The news will come out on the first and third Thursdays of the month and our regular episodes will continue to be released on the second and fourth Thursdays. See you again in September. This is Scams and Cons News with Jim Grinstead.
[00:00:31] In today's news, Canadian officials reveal the largest art scam in world history. A scammer stole a student's identity to score a Taylor Swift concert and the New York pain surgeon is off to jail after his role in an fraudulent trip and fall accidents.
[00:00:48] We begin with scams that are depriving Missouri farmers of hay they need to feed their animals. KY-3 in Springfield, Missouri has the story. These scams are mostly online and they are usually here, found on Facebook.
[00:01:01] Leaders with the Department of Agriculture say farmers have been wiring money, then they don't get their hay. This is a brand new game that we've never seen before in the agriculture industry in Missouri. A new scam for some lingering problems.
[00:01:16] Because we're in a drought, there's not a lot of hay out here. Chris Chin is the director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture. She says the hay scams started this year coming from the ongoing drought here in Missouri.
[00:01:30] Have made payment through a wire payment system and have never received delivery of that hay. Officials with the Department say over a dozen farmers have reached out, but they told me hay right now is going for $100 to $125 for a big round bail.
[00:01:47] Chin says most of the scams come from Facebook. She says if you see this immediately call police and then notify them. Chin encourages farmers to go to a bank and get a cashier's check when buying hay, or get hay from people you know.
[00:02:01] She says it's already a hard time for farmers, so be on the lookout. A Long Island restaurant tour says his staff was skimming money from diners by using their credit cards to buy gift cards. Long Island News gives us the details.
[00:02:16] Kelly Bossard has all new staff at Pearl Restaurant in Island Park. She fired employees she suspected had been stealing from her for months, and this sign is just part of the story. How much money do you think that this has cost you? Hundreds of thousands.
[00:02:31] Here's all the initiation dates. Bossard found rent flags buried within her Point of Sale system. Stacks of paperwork show repeat transactions on gift cards that were bought then used minutes later. This happened every single day. I'm just showing you October.
[00:02:48] This is not the way gift cards are used. You don't redeem and activate in the same day or the same minute. Bossard believes former staff manipulated her system to program money onto gift cards without actually collecting any money. How easy is it to manipulate the system?
[00:03:05] Easy. Three clicks. Whenever people came to pay cash, they could actually pocket that cash and cash their checks out to their gift card. Bossard's staff saw police have confirmed they are investigating, but now no gift cards can be used, even those that customers bought legitimately.
[00:03:22] The police have shut down the processing platform so we can't read what's on the cards. Even if they have receipts, we can't tell what's on the card at this time. Bossard's story is a warning to others because this suspected scam nearly brought her to the brink of bankruptcy.
[00:03:38] We are the victim of an egregious and nefarious crime, but it has been to the detriment of us, our business, our reputation, but also our customers. In Canada, police say 1,000 paintings were stolen in the largest art theft in history. The CBC explains.
[00:03:57] Police say more than 1,000 alleged fraudulent artworks purported to be painted by Norval Morissot were seized by them. On March 1st, police arrested eight people.
[00:04:08] Those people are now facing more than 40 charges for their alleged involvement in the fraudulent manufacturing and distribution of artwork purported to be by that Indigenous artist. Morissot, also known as Copper Thunderboard, was a prolific Indigenous artist.
[00:04:24] He was from the Binguie, Nayasi and Ishnabek First Nation, which is just in the Thunder Bay area. For his death in 2007, allegations began to emerge of individuals creating and selling art under his name.
[00:04:38] According to police, some of these alleged forgery operations began even before that dating back to 1996. Now, their investigation began in 2019. Police say they were able to dismantle three groups working in three different parts of Ontario.
[00:04:55] They say these groups not only hired or were artists or had artists create these fake paintings, but they also created false provenance. And in some cases, certificates of authentication this in order to sell the fakes, not just provincially or nationally, but in some cases internationally as well.
[00:05:11] And while they only seized about roughly a thousand fakes, police say they believe that these three operations produced somewhere between 4,500 and 6,000 fakes. Now some of these paintings sold for tens of thousands of dollars to unsuspecting members of the public. This is Scams and Kahn's News.
[00:05:30] An Oceanside woman in the Bronx, New York says she was swindled out of $475,000 by someone who got her information off a dating website.
[00:05:40] She'd only been on the site a few days when someone contacted her saying he was an engineer who was leaving soon for a job in Manila, the Philippines. He told her he loved her but then began asking for money.
[00:05:52] She ignored the request until he sent her a message that said people were going to kill him unless he came up with some money and that she should wire it to him. Over the next month, she had sent $475,000 to the man.
[00:06:08] A private investigator put together a paper trail but police haven't reacted. The scammer has now threatened to hire someone to kill her.
[00:06:16] You've heard a lot about the prices of Taylor Swift concerts this summer, but a college student had his identity stolen so a scammer could get tickets for himself. He then swindled other students out of thousands of dollars making promises to sell them tickets.
[00:06:31] Fox 5 in Atlanta tells the story. Kennesaw police say someone used the lure of Taylor Swift tickets to steal a KSU student's identity and then used that identity to swindle other Swifties out of hundreds of dollars. Rachel Anderson is a huge Taylor Swift fan.
[00:06:50] When someone who claimed to be in one of her classes at KSU messaged her through a class chat and said he had an extra ticket, she jumped at the chance. She sent him a photo of her school ID and the pin so he could transfer the ticket.
[00:07:03] Later that day, she started getting threatening emails and texts. Anderson shared some of the texts with us like this one. If I don't get my money back, I am filing a police report, a lawsuit, and submitting a complaint to the university.
[00:07:18] She called police who quickly realized Anderson's identity had been stolen. Police say scammers know who to target. Right now, they're targeting Swifties. Lastly, sometimes slip and fall accidents happen because of negligence on the part of the property owner or the business.
[00:07:36] When they do, they often sue or reach a settlement with an insurance company. But it's difficult to prove whether the accident was real or staged. The insurance journal says a New York licensed pain management doctor has been sentenced to 36 months in prison for his participation in a scheme
[00:07:54] that obtained fraudulent insurance reimbursements and other compensation from fraudulent trip and fall accidents. Prosecutors said Riviero and others attempted to defraud the victims of more than $31 million. Three of those co-conspirators were convicted in a 2019 trial for the same trip and fall fraud.
[00:08:13] Patients were also conspirators in the scam, and they agreed to undergo surgeries or treatments from specific doctors regardless of whether the treatments were necessary. The patients were paid between $1,000 and $1,500 for their participation. This is Scams & Cons News.
[00:09:02] We'll examine true cases of people who were killed while on vacation. Was it murder? Or just a horrible accident? That's up to you and the law to decide. But either way, if you leave for your vacation in the plane and come home under the plane,
[00:09:21] you've definitely gone on a slaycation. Join us every week for a fascinating new episode. 911, what's your emergency? But make sure to pack your body bags because getting away can be murder. This is Slaycation.