Wyckoff
December 1, 2010 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 7
Woman loses $6,360 in telephoned mail-order fraud
by John Koster A 46-year-old Wyckoff woman lost $6,360 in a telephone fraud after being threatened by a scam artist impersonating a federal official who threatened her with arrest and imprisonment. The woman received a telephone call on Nov. 19 from someone who falsely represented himself as a detective from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. The caller told her there was a warrant for her arrest for buying narcotics over the Internet, and that officers from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency were on their way to her home to arrest her. The caller also told her she could satisfy the warrant if she wired $3,000 to a location in the Dominican Republic. The woman, who had purchased legal vitamins on the Internet, went to her bank, withdrew the money, and then went to a Western Union office and wired the $3,000 to the Dominican Republic. When she returned home, she received another telephone call telling her that she had wrongly sent the money in United States currency, and that the money had to be sent in foreign currency to cancel the impending arrest. She had more money changed into foreign currency and mailed it. The total with fees came to $6,360. “The entire situation was a fraud,” Wyckoff Police Chief Benjamin Fox said. “Wyckoff Police have confirmed with the FDA and the DEA that this is an ongoing fraud that has often been successful.” Some of the information gained with the cooperation of the Wyckoff woman who was the victim has been shared between the Wyckoff Police Department and with the DEA. The investigation is ongoing. Chief Fox reminds residents that no federal agency of the U.S. would forestall an arrest by having money sent overseas. He urges residents to contact local police immediately if they are asked to send money outside the U.S. due to an impending arrest, especially if the money is to be sent by wire transfer. Some months ago, a Wyckoff couple sent several thousand dollars to Canada to keep their grandson out of prison after an automobile accident in a rented car, only to learn that their grandson had not been involved in an accident and was not in Canada when the request came in. Fox also reminded residents that burglaries
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and other illegal home entries tend to increase during the holiday season, and that a number of towns around Wyckoff have experienced burglaries or attempts in the past few weeks. Burglars dressed as salesmen or contractors will typically knock on residents’ doors to see if the house is occupied, and will break in if there is no answer. If residents answer the door, they will pretend to be lost or will ask for someone who doesn’t live there. Any time a stranger knocks on a residential door with an implausible story, the resident should call the police at (201) 891-2121 and give a street address and a description of the stranger. A burglary was reported earlier in November in Wyckoff, when the owner of a landscape company reported that the storage trailers he had parked on Windham Court North were broken into on Nov. 9. An assortment of equipment was stolen. Patrolman Terrance Murphy investigated.
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