Woman puts stop to ‘shipping scam’

The African men wooed the disabled woman over the Internet for several months, then asked Sheryl Sandberg for a favor.

The men sent her a package containing money orders, checks from foreign banks, cashier’s checks and traveler’s checks and asked her to distribute the items via Federal Express and U.S. mail to 80 people.

Sandberg agreed. After all, three of the four men she talked to via Yahoo’s instant messaging had promised to move to Spokane and marry the 52-year-old. They called her “honey.”

“They tried to sweet-talk their way in,” Sandberg said.

The first package arrived with prewritten labels for the 80 recipients. And Sandberg sent them out.

When the Spokane woman received the second package containing about $250,000 in checks and a request to fill out the addresses herself, she figured something wasn’t right.

Sandberg took the package to the Shadle COPS shop and told the volunteer she wanted to talk to a police detective.

It’s called “the shipping scam,” said Spokane Police Sgt. Jason Hartman. The scammers often target vulnerable, lonely people as “middle men” to carry out the plan.

One of the checks was for nearly $20,000, detectives said. One of the men told Sandberg to cash it, take $1,000 for herself and send the rest back to them by Western Union.

If she had cashed the check, the bank would have gone after her for the money, said John Weber, vice president security officer for Washington Trust Bank.

Much of the scam is done by sending people traveler’s checks and money orders, some with legitimate items for sale in newspaper classifieds or online, detectives explained. The checks are often worth more than the value of the item. The instructions are for the person to take what’s owed to them and send the rest of the money back to them. Then the victim gets stuck when the check bounces.

Officials said they don’t know how many people became victims due to the first mailing, which went out to 80 people all over the United States and Canada.

Spokane Police detective Stacey Carr has been trying to contact as many of the potential victims as possible. So far, she’s spoken with people in Idaho, Colorado and Wisconsin.

About all law enforcement can do is warn people. Even if Spokane law enforcement can figure out who the men are, there is little they can do because the men are in another country.

Carr was grateful to Sandberg for being alert about the second package of checks that arrived.

“I feel good to a certain extent,” Sandberg said. “But I am still angry and upset.”

Sandberg first met the men while she was playing cribbage online at Yahoo, she said. Then they quit playing and went to instant messaging, she said. Sandberg had a Web cam they would ask her to turn on while she was chatting.

That’s one way to make sure they aren’t talking to law enforcement, Carr said.

The four men are still trying to contact Sandberg despite her telling them she knew that what they did was illegal.

Sandberg has changed her phone number because the men have started to threaten her.