Saturday, March 11, 2006
By Lori Monsewicz REPOSITORY STAFF WRITER

Detective Sgt. Danny McCartney holds authentic-looking money orders and checks sent to a Canton man from Thailand, Canada and Nigeria as part of a scam.

CANTON - The computer-savvy Nigerian Internet scammers are busier than ever.

Police say they’ve been joined by criminal entrepreneurs in Canada and the Far East.

“We’re getting hammered with people getting involved in these Nigerian and Canadian scams. It’s just ridiculous what these people are falling for,” said police detective Sgt. Les Baroni.

The e-mail Ralph Owens Jr. got about a potential job didn’t seem unusual.

A divorced tire salesman trying to make the rent and pay child support, Owens said he was looking for a job over the Internet when he received a computer correspondence from a man claiming to be an abrasives manufacturer. The man said he sold sandpaper and other material from Bangkok, Thailand, and wrote that he needed a financial liaison in the U.S.

“He said his clients would send money to me. I was to cash the checks, keep 10 percent and send him the rest,” Owens said. “The thing that really got me was he sent me a job application. It looked like a job application like you get when you apply for a job at any factory.”

Owens also received an application when he answered an advertisement from a man claiming to be a British man living in Lagos, Nigeria. In that e-mail, a man claimed to be an art dealer handling paintings, sculptures and other types of art.

“Again, the guy sent me an employment application,” Owens said.

The first of several checks Owens received came with directions: Owens was to send $2,400, minus any transfer fees, to Opeyemi Akibu in Lagos.

On Tuesday, Owens wired $2,271 to Nigeria.

“It went through with no problems,” Owens said.

The next day he tried to wire $3,000 more to Nigeria. Instead, he got a phone call from the Western Union office.

It turns out the checks Owens was getting were fake, a scam used to dupe people into cashing counterfeit checks. The scammers keep the wired money.

Western Union “told me they were not going to approve the transfer because, No. 1, I had never met the man I was sending the money to and I couldn’t provide a physical description. Two, they said they’ve had a lot of fraudulent transfers go through to Nigeria,” Owens said. “They told me to contact the police and the FBI.”

He did. Then, he helped police recover at least $6,580 of the $10,000 in checks, and returned it to the local FirstMerit Bank branch that had cashed them.

Detective Sgt. Danny McCartney said the bank had cashed the traveler’s checks “without verifying that they were authentic.

“I’d like to see (the bank) take responsibility to review their security policies in reference to verifying the authenticity of traveler’s checks and money orders presented to them in the amount of thousands of dollars,” the detective said.

Calls to FirstMerit seeking comment were not returned Friday.

McCartney doesn’t anticipate charging Owens, whom he considers a victim.

The international money orders Owens received from Thailand adding up to $4,625 — five counterfeit $925 money orders — were not cashed, McCartney said.

Baroni said detectives are also working on a case in which a Canton woman promised an Internet job was sent 22 authentic looking $100 bills. The man who sent the money said he can’t get them cashed in his country, so he asked her to go to Western Union and have the money wired back to him in smaller bills.

“These bills are so good they passed the pen test,” Baroni said. The pen test is an electronic test in which a special pen will make a mark that changes color if the bill is fake.

“The clerks even looked at the water mark, which looked real,” he said.

Baroni asked that anyone who receives money or checks from Nigeria, Canada or any other foreign country to call police at (330) 649-5800 or the Secret Service at (330) 761-0544.

Reach Repository writer Lori Monsewicz at (330) 580-8309 or e-mail: lori.monsewicz@cantonrep.com

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