Mail Barrage May Have Exceeded Legal Envelope Fbi To Examine Woman’s Boxes Of Fund-Raising Mailings For Possible Fraud
The FBI is investigating whether a deluge of fund-raising mail sent to an elderly California woman violates federal mail fraud laws.
“It looks, at first blush, like mail fraud,” FBI spokesman George Grotz said after reading a newspaper eport about the amount of solicitations Faye Shelby has received. “We’d like to sit down with her and see if it meets the minimum requirements for mail fraud.”
The San Francisco Examiner reported Sunday that Shelby received nearly 700 pieces of mail in just four months from more than 75 organizations, all soliciting money for various causes.
Shelby, 86, said she was trying to pull together information that would help the investigation.
“I’m interested in helping in any way I can,” Shelby said from her apartment in an Oakland senior center.
Her daughter, Nancy Shelby, who has waged a letter-writing campaign to get her mother’s name taken off direct-mail lists, was happy to get a call from the FBI.
“I am immensely relieved and hopeful that this FBI investigation will bring further light to this problem and that other people like my mother won’t become victimized by this,” she said. “Maybe there will be some action taken, something that will stop them.”
Shelby became the target of what authorities call “fright mail” appeals after donating money to a handful of conservative public policy organizations. The mailings, which came in envelopes marked “Urgent!” “PERSONAL” and even “Jury Duty Notice,” detailed dire predictions for such things as her Medicare and Social Security benefits if she did not respond with a donation.
“I didn’t know that I could just turn them down,” said Shelby, explaining why she had sent money to the groups. “I was thinking it was something I had to do. … I thought if I didn’t correspond about Social Security, I wouldn’t get my checks.”
Grotz said FBI agents would pore over the boxes of mail Shelby had collected.
“We’d like to see if we have a pattern,” he said.