Beware of Scammers Placing
Bogus Orders 

Be aware and protect yourself from a growing scam that is aimed at window covering dealers.

The scam will start out with with either an email message or a phone call placed using a Telecommunications Relay Service (also known as TTY or TDD), which is commonly used for hearing impaired people. In any call from a relay service you will be speaking to an operator who is reading what the caller on the other end is typing using the TTY machine. 

This person on the other end of the message or call will want to place a bogus order for a large quantity of blinds or shades. Usually the blinds are all the same size and same color. For example, 6o mini-blinds in white all at 48" x 48". The calls are often from an individual in a foreign country. This caller will provide a credit card number and the name and address of the card holder. You will be asked to "run" the card for verification right away. Many times these cards will be accepted when you run them immediately. You will be asked to ship to an address often within the United States, but sometimes it will be out of the country. 

If the credit card is not accepted, the individual often has alternative credit cards or may provide multiple credit cards to try up front. If a dealer asks for the security number on the back of the card, the caller is either is unable to provide it or provides a fabricated number. The caller may also give a stolen UPS shipping account number. 

The individual will advise you to add large shipping charges to the cost of the blinds and ask you to charge those costs to the credit card. The scheme is played out later when the caller will instruct you to send cash to a non-existent shipping company for the freight amount. 

The call or e-mail may include:

• Contact from a relay service or through an overseas operator (please note that there CAN be legitimate calls from relay services).

• Contact via e-mail from a person you don’t know.

• Request for a large number of blinds or shades, all the same size and color; for example, 60 white mini blinds, 48" x 48".

• Provision of a credit card number that may be approved if you run it immediately—the individual may specifically ask you to have the credit card approved right away.

• Refusal to give a return phone number; instead the individual says they will contact you—usually by e-mail.

How to protect yourself:

• Don’t take orders from anyone you don’t know who contacts you by e-mail or phone only and wants to place an order for foreign shipment.

• If you suspect fraud or a swindle, simply hang up.

• Always ask for the CV number on the back of a VISA or MasterCard.

• Wait two days and try to verify the card number again

• If you’re suspicious, report the credit card number to the issuing bank and let the bank know that you think it might be a stolen credit card.

• Report the attempted fraud to your local police and ask them what further steps you should take, if any.

• Never give your bank routing number or account number to a stranger over the phone.

--source: Wikipedia

Many scams involve telephone calls to convince the victim that the person on the other end of the deal is a real person and telling the truth. The scammer, possibly impersonating a U.S. citizen or other person of a nationality - or even gender - other than his/her own, would cause suspicion by placing an ordinary voice call to the victim. 

In these cases, scammers use Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS), a US federally funded relay service where an operator or a text/speech translation program acts as an intermediary between someone using an ordinary telephone and a deaf caller using TDD or other TeleType device. The scammer might specify they are deaf or not, and that their use of a phone requires the use of a relay service. The victim, possibly drawn in by a sense of sympathy for the caller in light of a stated disability, might be more inclined to agree to the fraudulent arrangement.

Because of current FCC regulations and confidentiality laws, operators are required to relay every call verbatim and must adhere to a strict code of confidentiality and ethics. Thus no relay operator is permitted to make judgments about the legality and/or legitimacy of any relay call and must relay the call without interference. As such, the relay operator cannot warn victims even when they suspect that the call is a scam; some sources claim that up to half of all IP Relay calls are scams.

Due to the relative ease at tracking phone-based relay services, scammers have a tendency to use Internet Protocol-based relay services such as IP Relay to place these calls. A common strategy consists of binding their overseas IP address to a router or server located on US soil, thus allowing them to use US-based relay service providers without interference.

TRS is sometimes used to relay credit card information for the purposes of making a fraudulent purchase with a stolen credit card. In many cases however, it is simply a means for the scammer to further lure the victim into the scam.