HOUGHTON -- Customer service reps at Midwest Loan Services in Houghton handle hundreds of calls each day. But when a non-customer called back on December 10th, the question wasn't what anyone expected.
"They were telling us about a letter they'd received with a check, and the letter told them to deposit the funds in an account and wire the money to a specific place in Canada,” says Customer Service Manager Rick Ginter. “They said the letter told them to keep the balance."
The fake letter bears the heading of the Primax Group which claims to be a division of Midwest. It isn't.
The check, made out for $3,992, looks legit. Midwest thinks it could be a photocopy, but it isn't real either.
Unfortunately, many people don't wait for the check to clear and end up sending $3,000 of their own money to the scammer.
"We’ve seen about 20 checks, and we've had our bank return them as soon as possible,” says Jake Stevens who works in investor accounting. “We're trying to contact people with the checks, however we can, to keep them from wiring the money."
Midwest has contacted local authorities, but there isn't much they can do to help people who've already lost their money, especially since it appears to be an international scheme. There's a contact number on the letter with a Quebec area code. It works, but people on the other end are neither friendly nor helpful.
"If you receive any kind of letter with a check from someone you've never heard of, it's best not to do anything,” says Midwest C.O.O. Jon Rastello. “Or before you do anything, investigate very carefully."
Authorities say these kinds of scams are particularly common around the holidays. But no matter what the time of year, it's important to remember if anything sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
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