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Phone crooks shake down Alaska Bush
April 1, 1993
Michael Gerhardt
Arctic Sounder
Say you live in Kiana and you get a telephone call from a polite gentleman who says you have won a free Cadillac. All you need to do, he says, to get that beautiful luxury car parked in front of your home in Kiana, is to send $800 for shipping costs.
Before the excitement sets in, and before you ask yourself where you are going to take your new Cadillac for a spin in Kiana, the Alaska attorney general's office has some advice.
Hang up.
"If people ask for money in exchange for a free prize, hang up on them," said Jim Forbes, an assistant attorney general in the state's Fair Business Practices Section.
Rural Alaska has become a favorite target of telemarketing scams in the past six months, Forbes said. Operations in the Lower 48 have inundated the state with bogus claims to "free" prizes.
"It's gotten to be almost an epidemic problem," Forbes said.
At least two people in Kiana have been called with offers, one for the Cadillac and the other for a $30,000 cash prize, according to Don and Margaret Dorsey of the Kiana Trading Post. The Dorseys convinced the supposed Cadillac winner not to send his money.
What both incidents had in common was that in order to receive the "prizes," the winners had to send money — $800 for the Cadillac and $400 for the cash prize, according, Margaret Dorsey said.
"He had the money to send the $800 and he was going to do it. We just said, 'No, it's a real bum idea.' His wife was very much against it and she was glad we talked him out of it."
Three other Kiana residents, in separate incidents, were called and asked if they had credit cards, she said. When the villagers told the callers that they did not have credit cards, the callers abruptly hung up.
Forbes, in a letter to Rep. Ron Larson, said the state knows of cases where rural Alaskans have lost a "substantial amount of money, in the tens of thousands of dollars" in such scams.
Many of the victims, he said, are elderly or reside in Native villages.
Forbes attributed the rise to several factors.
Alaska has no laws regulating telemarketers. Other states have been responding to telemarketing scams by passing legislation designed to discourage the operations and to make them difficult to carry out. This in turn has caused scam operators to turn to states like Alaska that do not have regulatory laws.
Legislation proposed by Larson, D-Palmer, would help the situation, Forbes said.
However, laws will only go so far in handling the problem.
The other reason Forbes gave for the increase in scams, especially in rural Alaska, is that the operations are bringing in money.
"These scam artists that do these...have grown in numbers because the scams have been so successful," Forbes said.
"They target the villages as far as I can tell," he said. "I think it's getting worse. These guys realize they can get to villages by phone."
The pull to get something for nothing is strong; people play pull tabs all the time with that in mind, Margaret Dorsey said.
"Anything you can win for very little money is great," she said. "So even if you win a Cadillac you can't use, it sounds like a great deal."
The Dorseys, who recently saw a news item on similar scams in Anchorage, said they urged the potential Cadillac victim to call the Better Business Bureau.
Forbes encourages anyone who gets a call from someone offering "free" prizes for a small fee to ignore the offer and to report the incident to the Better Business Bureau in Anchorage.
It doesn't do any good to list the names of companies used by scam operators in the past because they are constantly changing their names, Forbes said.
However, there are warning signs that consumers should watch out for, he said.
Most scam operations will offer a free car, but other typical offers include big screen televisions, a free vacation, or a big cashiers check. Often, more than one prize will be offered.
Forbes offers advice on how to deal with these.
"Hang up on them. Don't even ask any questions. It's bogus — they're trying to steal your money. If people ask for money in exchange for a free prize, hang up on them."
"People want to believe they've won a free prize — they haven't."
