Curiouser and Curiouser
December 4th, 2015 · 1 Comment · Posted in rural life
D0wntown Bailey, NC
I did my civic duty yesterday. I reported the Craigslist scam to our local sheriff’s office and destroyed the phony $2,200 check that had been sent to me by the perpetrators.
But after I ran the check through the shredder, I wondered if there was anything more to learn about this scheme. I went back and read more closely the emails that had come my way after I advertised my young goats on Craigslist. The scam was supposed to work this way: I would get a check in an amount exceeding my $150 asking price for “the item.” I would deposit the check, then send a moneygram for the excess amount to the person who would transport “the item.”
Even though the deal was screwy, someone somewhere had paid to have the phony check delivered to me by UPS. And in the last email I received, there was detailed information about the person who was to be on the receiving end of my moneygram.
This person’s name was Sally Kostka and her address was given as a small town called Bailey in North Carolina. When I Googled the name, I found there was a 53-year-old Sally Kostka in Bailey, NC. A check of the address given by the scammers showed her living a few miles outside town. Google’s satellite image produced a house on a country road surrounded by small farms.
But wait, there’s more. Though information about Sally Kostka was scant, it did list her as “an executive” with a P & K Trucking company. P & K Trucking’s address is just 4.4 miles away from the one the scammers gave for Sally Kostka.
I wondered if Sally Kostka could be involved in the scheme, or if the scammers had just picked her name out of the blue, the same way they’d picked me out of all the millions of ads placed on Craigslist.
Eager to find out more, I called the village office in Bailey. The woman who answered the phone there, Becky Smith, listened closely to my wild story about getting a phony $2,200 check for $150 goats and how I was supposed to send a moneygram to someone who lived just a few miles outside her little town in North Carolina. Then, incredibly enough, she said, “That’s funny. I had another call like this yesterday.”
Smith said she would pass the information to the village police. I then reported what I knew to the county sheriff’s office. So far, a call I left for Sally Kostka at P & K Tucking has not been returned. I can’t help wondering whether sleepy little Bailey, a 21st century Mayberry with a Hardee’s and a Dollar store, has become a hub for internet fraud.
Picture Barney Fife with an iPad.
Same thing with some are work or “items” that I was selling for a friend.
Kentucky in our case. You caught that somewhat off English.
Ours was 6 years ago so this must be a scam that works, or the dude just got
out of jail and is starting again.
Glad you had your wits about you.