"But a fool and his money soon go separate ways…"

by Katie Gomez on January 4, 2010

in Uncategorized

You have to love it when the latest in email scams makes it into a local newspaper. It’s not like there isn’t a quagmire engulfing our world worth reporting on. Local wineries are being taken for a ride, and others need to be warned. But fear not—The Napa County District Attorney’s Office is hard at work investigating the shenanigans.

According to the DA’s office, the scam involves a winery receiving an email about wanting to order several cases (15 – 20) of wine for a big event. The scam includes promising to have all the wine picked up once payment is made, but after using a fraudulent credit card to order the wine, the scammer somehow convinces the winery to wire several thousand dollars to a “shipping company” to pay for the shipping. The winery runs the credit card info, which is initially approved, but because the credit card used was stolen, the credit card company eventually gets wind and refuses to pay the charges. No shipping company ever shows to pick up the wine of course, and the wire-transferred money is gone.

Who in bloody hell is actually stupid enough to wire thousands of dollars to a non-existent shipping company without obtaining a shitload of information first, not the least of which is a tax ID number?! But here’s the best part. The DA’s office, in an effort to prevent further financial disaster, has given gullible wineries some warning signs that might mean they are being scammed: The e-mails are almost always written in poor English, with numerous grammatical and typographical errors. Taxpayer dollars, hard at work.

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Don January 5, 2010

I read about this…I think it was Nigerian Prince ordering the wine for is wedding! Nice ELO reference.

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2 Katie Pizzuto January 6, 2010

From an offshore account of course 😉

Every time I read the ELO lyric the song gets stuck in my head, LOL.

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3 Coupe 60 January 6, 2010

shhhh, if the Coleman-Nicole guy reads this, my goose is cooked…

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4 Katie Pizzuto January 7, 2010

I should’ve known you were behind this whole debacle Lou.

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