A St. Louis-area coffee company has been identified as a victim in a scam involving credit card theft and overseas trafficking of items purchased online.
According to a recent report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, DiscountCoffee.com, a seller of packaged coffee and coffee-related products, was notified by a credit card company that the number for a modest $200 order had been stolen.
“We see all kinds of fraud,” Cherri Newbury, the company’s president, told Post-Dispatch consumer affairs reporter Kavita Kumar. “But most of it is where the addresses don’t match. So this one was a surprise to us. It’s the most sophisticated we’ve seen.” DiscountCoffee.com has been selling online for 15 years.
Here’s how the scam went down, according to Kumar’s report
:
The company tracked down the person at the shipping address who was to receive the package. He apparently did not know he was a part of a scam.
“That is when we figured out how deep it was,” she said. “They thought they were working for a legitimate company.”
Officials say scammers often troll online job boards or post ads for part-time work out of people’s own homes. They receive packages and then just have to put a new shipping label on them, with the destination usually being overseas.
DiscountCoffee.com recently tracked down a reshipper who lived in a small town in Mississippi. Newbury said the man broke down in tears when told of the criminal activity. He said he had been desperate for a job, having been out of work for two years.
The full story: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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