Scammers Continue to Plague Glass Shops

During the slow summer glass shops across the board are hungry for work-but in light of circulating e-mail scams glass shops should still show caution in what work they accept.

"I know of two glass shops here in Louisiana who lost $1,100 [as a result of scams]," says Linda Medine, owner of Integrity Glassworks in Baton Rouge, La. After scammers contacted her, she called USGNN.com™ to warn other glass shops.

"What they do is pretend to be a deaf mute, so they have an IP operator call here and then they agree to do correspondence through email. The first time [it happened] I thought I was dealing with a deaf mute so I thought, whatever I could to help, great," Medine says. "But when they asked me to ship to Africa, that sent up a red flag."

She adds, "The first time they did it to me I caught it and reversed the charges."

The second time, the scammers went to the company's website and found Medine's email address and contacted her directly, again asking her to ship glass to Africa. Medine contacted her bank and reported the credit card numbers she was given by the scammer. "They [the scammer] wanted me to charge $6,500 dollars on this card," she says. "If someone's got a credit card with a limit of $6,500 they're a hardworking person."