Copper Electrical Wire Scam!

Copper Wire ScamWith copper wire prices up so high over the last 5 years many crooks have found ways to scam people and businesses in order to scrap copper wire for cash. Beware of these crooks by taking the necessary precautions listed here:

Check their email address!

Jim@ABDcompany.com shows that they have a website called www.ABCcompany.com and you should view it to see how well it’s designed.

SCAM! ABCcompany@yahoo.com – That shows the crook just created a quick email address on Yahoo!

Credit card billing address!

Make sure the billing address of the credit card is the same as the shipping address.

SCAM! Crooks will steal credit cards and try to make purchases over the phone. They say things such as “I just moved from Connecticut to California so my billing address hasn’t changed yet”.

Try calling the credit card company to ask about the card in question. A lot of times they might tell you right away, “That card has been shut off due to fraudulent claims”. Other times they will call the card holder for you to be sure they’re trying to make that purchase.

The Way The Scam Goes Down!

I work for a wire and cable company in NH as a sales person. I process a lot of orders each day due to the traffic on our website. Individuals will call looking for short runs of electrical wire for their home that we cut to exact lengths to avoid waste.

First: So I’ll get the phone call of someone looking to buy “X wire”. My first thought of it being a scam will be the type of wire and amount they’re looking for. The SCAM WIRES are those with the most copper in them such as a large electrical cable traveling from a telephone pole to a homes electrical box. Something such as an extension cord isn’t a typical scam because the connectors on each end and the thick rubber insulation make the cable worth less to someone trying to scrap it for the copper conductors.

Second: The next thing I look for is the email address and credit card information as mentioned above. It seems, based on history, that most of these crooks also have the cables shipped to a location near Mexico so they can easily travel across the border to scrap it there instead. I’m assuming there is even less of a trace to the person at that point.

Last: Report everything to the Police! hahahahaha

Our company was scammed in this exact method for quite a bit of money so we filed about 15 reports trying to get the police, and many others, to do something about the fraud but they never did anything.

Since then I’ve TRIED to fill out more reports for “potential fraud” but the police won’t let me because it hasn’t happened yet. Since we’re seeing it so much we’re able to catch it before it happens and send that infomation to someone trying to catch scammers.

So then I tried to bring a police officer in to our company to discuss the matter more in depth. I asked, “Is there anyone who wants to see that this particular person is attempting to commit fraud? Is there anyone that wants to investigate it deeper to catch the crook”?

They mentioned it was out of their jurisdiction and that these fraudulent claims don’t typically make it very far. So I’d be spinning my wheels for nothing.

The funny thing is, I wasn’t gaining anything by bringing the officer in and explaining this to him, nor was I going to get anything if they caught him other than satisfaction. I simply asked “WHO WANTS THIS INFORMATION???” “WHO’S OUT THERE STOPPING THESE PEOPLE???”

Apparently no one…

P.S. If anyone knows where to send information like this please send me an email here: chris@wesbellinc.com

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2012 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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