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Forwarded from the lib-license. A new variation on an old con, but maybe it's worthr eminding evening duty staff. Tony Tony McSeán Director of Library Relations Elsevier +44 7795 960516 +44 1865 843630 -----Original Message----- From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Hamaker, Chuck Sent: 22 February 2005 02:44 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Telemarketing Scam aimed at libraries >From the Chronicle of Higher Education From the issue dated February >25, 2005 College Libraries Are New Targets of Telemarketing Scams COLLEGE LIBRARIES AND ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS around the country have recently been hit with a new type of telemarketing scam. In a typical case, a telemarketer calls during off hours, in hopes of reaching a lower-level employee, and says he needs to confirm an address. But after the address is confirmed, the telemarketer says, "So this is where we should send the directory?" If the library employee says yes, the library will get a bill. --> SEE http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i25/25a03401.htm (requires subscription) Rick Anderson, a librarian at the University of Nevada at Reno, says he was suspicious when he got a call demanding that the library pay for a business directory he had never heard of. The woman on the line demanded to speak to the university's lawyer. His suspicions deepened when the caller, who said she was from a company called Pentium Capital, would not give her full name, identifying herself only as "Ms. Larson." He pressed her for more information, and he did get a phone number before she got huffy. "Are you refusing to give me the name of your attorney?" she said. Then she said she'd see him in court and hung up. Mr. Anderson, who has received calls like this several times in the past, says the call fit the pattern of a type of telemarketing scam that has recently hit college libraries and academic departments around the country. .. "They will tape record the end of the conversation, during which they go through a script," says Todd M. Kossow, a staff lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission. "Once they send the organization an invoice, they will indicate that they have someone on tape who ordered it." Telemarketers might also say that they are merely confirming the renewal of a subscription when no subscription exists, he says. Or a company might send an invoice that is made to look like something the library might have ordered. A call for money might come from a "collection agency," but that agency is typically a front for the main operation ....