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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Agencies warn of grant scheme

Richard Roesler Staff writer

OLYMPIA – Rae Boggs was startled recently when a man called her Colville office and announced that she’d been approved for an $8,000 federal grant.

That was odd, because Boggs had never applied for one.

No worries, the man said. The money would be hers, if she’d just pay a $249 fee. Of course, they’d need her bank account number, so they could deposit those federal dollars.

She hesitated.

“He said, ‘I understand your concern, but we’re very legitimate,’ ” she recalled.

The state attorney general’s office, the local Better Business Bureau and Spokane police are warning people about a Florida telemarketer that’s prompted a rash of complaints to officials in several states.

Local BBB President Jan Quintrall said the callers try to get people to reveal their bank account numbers to withdraw the $249 fee.

“Then the money’s gone and they can’t get ahold of anybody,” she said.

The company is the Federal Government Grant Information Center, apparently based in St. Petersburg, Fla. According to the BBB, the company goes by 10 other names, including Consumer Grants USA Inc., Customer Care Plus, and Ultimate Funding Inc.

According to the BBB, the company has sparked numerous complaints from people who got unsolicited telephone calls “guaranteeing” them a government grant of thousands of dollars in exchange for a $199 to $249 fee. Yet the grants never showed up, the bureau said, and the customers couldn’t get a refund.

Efforts to reach the company Tuesday were unsuccessful. No one answered the company’s main number, nor any of the nine other phone numbers listed for the company by the BBB. All but two had been disconnected.

Boggs said the man who called her was very convincing. She could hire her own attorney for about $1,500 and spend two years fighting for her grant, he said, or she could simply pay the $249 fee.

She agreed to pay the fee, and gave him her bank account information. To reassure her, the caller gave her a transaction number, his identification number and a customer service number to call with any questions. A second person, a “verifier,” came on the phone line to take some more information.

The $8,000 would arrive soon, the caller assured Boggs.

She hung up the phone, still feeling uneasy. Then she realized what was bothering her. It was July 5 – a holiday. Most federal offices were closed; most federal employees were off duty.

“If he was really working for the federal government, why would he be working on the holiday?” she said.

In a panic, she rushed to her computer and logged onto her bank accounts. She transferred most of the money out of her checking account. The next morning, she raced to her bank in Chewelah and closed the account within minutes of the bank’s opening.

Boggs tried calling the customer service number the telemarketer had given her, but was unable to get anything more than a recording despite nearly a dozen tries. In the end, she chalked it up to experience – and filed a complaint with Attorney General Christine Gregoire’s office.

Another person called by the company was Spokane’s Christine Brown.

“I was really suspicious,” she said. “But I kind of went along with them because I had a feeling it was a scam and I really wanted to nail them.”

She took notes during the call, from “Customer Care Plus.” She did, however, give the caller her bank account number. He assured her that her $8,000 federal grant would be deposited by July 8, minus the $249 “processing fee.”

To be safe, as soon as she hung up the phone, she transferred all her money out of the account.

“Sure enough, the eighth rolled around and they didn’t deposit any money,” she said. She closed the account and complained to the attorney general.

“I just got so angry,” she said. “I know that so many people end up getting ripped off, and even if there are people who want to complain, they don’t know how. They don’t know who to call.”

She later ran an Internet search on the 800 number the caller had given her. It turned up a June 22 warning from West Virginia Attorney General Darrell McGraw. McGraw warned of a scam targeting local flood victims. Callers were asking people for their checking account numbers to deduct a $295 fee in exchange for a $25,000 federal grant. The company phone number McGraw cited – (800) 551-7099 – is identical to the phone number Brown was given.

Coincidentally, that phone number is very similar to the toll-free number for Spokane’s Clarke and Stone bookstore. For more than two months, owner Julie Clarke said Tuesday, the bookstore’s been getting calls from people across the country, trying to find out if it’s really true that they qualify for thousands of dollars in free federal money. It’s unclear whether the callers have dialed wrong or been given the wrong number.

“Initially, the calls were from eastern, southern states, like Alabama, Mississippi and Florida,” she said. “We’re now receiving calls from California and the Tri-Cities.”

The bookstore workers, more used to fielding queries about medical and technical texts, have become amateur consumer counselors. People don’t pay for federal grants, they gently tell the callers. Nor should you give your bank account information to a telemarketer. They urge the callers to contact their bank and the local Better Business Bureau.

“You can hear the regret in their voices,” said Clarke.