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Too good to be true: Scams busted
Bank warns that fake checks have hit area
By Faye Ellison
Staff Writer
“Congratulations. On behalf of the entire staff of SWEEPSTAKESEVERYDAY Canada, we write to announce the good news to you today. Please be informed that you are one of the declared 60 winners in our last sweepstakes lottery held this month here in Canada. We have enclosed a check for $4,900 as a part of your winnings to enable you to sort out the required tax. You have five days to deposit this check, pay your tax and receive the rest of your winning amount.
We will appreciate it if you will keep all correspondence strictly confidential to avoid unnecessary fraud and double claim.”
Though the lottery is SWEEPSTAKESEVERYDAY Canada, the check is from the Lutheran Social Services of New York.
If you ask yourself why, then you are on the right track.
Lately the southeast, including the state of Georgia has been saturated with scams where citizens receive a check, but they must send back about $2,000 in taxes to claim the rest of their prize.
The opening statement is just a taste of what the Federal Bureau of Investigations claims is a way for drug traffickers or terrorists to filter money outside of the United States.
“If you go to security meetings, the FBI believes that this type of fraud is being used to take money out of this country for two reasons, for drugs or terrorism,” Queensborough National Bank and Trust Security Officer Paul Turner said.
“There are probably a few that use these scams as a job.”
According to Turner, the scam checks are easy to make and are often used to fool citizens, especially the elderly, and sometimes even bank tellers.
“A lot of people I see [taken in by the scam] so many times are the elderly,” Turner said.
“I don’t know how they target them. “The tellers at every bank are charged with an awesome responsibility to identify the checks.
Is it a good check or bad check?” The reason it is so hard for citizens
and even bank authorities to tell if a check is real, is because of the availability of products in the consumer market that crooks can use to counterfeit these checks, including the paper and machines that add the routing and account numbers at the bottom of the checks.
One Jefferson County citizen received notice saying they had won the SWEEPSTAKESEVERYDAY
Canada lottery with a check from the Lutheran Social Services of New York.
“When I saw it, I said scam, scam, scam,” Charlie Cofer said recently of the letter he received in a hand addressed envelope. “Nobody sends anything for nothing.
“The fact that they wanted
me to cash the check and send
part of it back was the giveaway.”
Though it is the first scam
letter he received, Cofer said
that he knew they were trying
to get him to believe it was
real through saying the check
was from the Lutheran Social
Services.
“They try to get people with
the good cause,” Cofer said.
Turner said that many of the
scams he has seen involves a
European, Australian or Canadian
lottery.
“I think people get so excited,
‘I have won something,
I have won half a million dollars,’”
Turner said. “If they
truly had won a lottery, the
lottery is going to withhold any
taxes and give the difference
to the winner. Think, why are
they sending you too much?
If I only owe $2,000 in taxes,
then why are they sending a
$4,000 check?
“I have so many samples
of these scams it is enough to
choke a cat. There is not a day
that goes by that I don't get
FDIC warnings.”
Not only are businesses and
citizens not safe from these
scams, banks too are finding
more and more that their
checks are also being used as
fakes.
“When I was growing up,
bank cashiers checks were the
real McCoy, but that is not true
anymore,” Turner said.
Citizens Bank of Sandersville
faced a problem recently
when more than $87,000 in
cashiers’ checks were counterfeited
in the Midwest.
“In talking to Citizens
Bank, they do not issue official cashiers’ checks,” Turner
explained. “These people
went online captured the
bank’s logo, cut and pasted
it onto printing software and
printed the fake checks.”
Turner also noted that the
scam artists usually issue the
fake checks in areas where
the business or bank is not
located.
“They have a better chance
to create a check from one
region and mail it to another,”
he said. “They realize people
in that market might recognize
the business.”
Turner said though he is
not sure how
the counterfeiters
get citizens’
names, he does
believe there
are lists with
names and
addresses out
there. Including
if someone
signs up for
or purchases
something on
the Internet or
even if they
sell anything on
eBay, they may
receive payment
with fake
postal money
orders like a bank customer
in Waynesboro who sold a
motorcycle.
Turner also noted that VISA
and American Express checks
are also being counterfeited.
“They can produce a check
with almost 100 percent accuracy,”
Turner said. “They will
even go as far as to be sure to
get the paper to have little holograms
on it. They will make
it close enough to make the
customer believe it. No one is
immune to this. If you write
a check, there is a possibility
that some day someone will
counterfeit it.”
“But you have to have your
guard up. If you get something
out of the blue and you have
not participated, ask why.”
Many times in asking the
people who receive the letters,
the scammers will ask
them to Western Union the
money to cover taxes. Turner
said that scammers will usually
want the money sent out
of the country.
“The wires can literally just
jump from country to country
and tangle up a web so tight
that officials can’t tell,” he
said. “It is not like they are
moving millions or even hundreds
of thousands that are getting
watched. These are small
little wires, so it
does not catch a
lot of red flags.
“But if the
money does go
out of the country
by Western
Union, there is
a two day wait.
If you feel
you have been
scammed, if
you would just
come forward
and say, ‘I think
I am the victim
of a scam,’
then you have
two days before
they will
release the money. But the
problem is that most people
are too embarrassed to admit
it.”
Local law enforcement
told him searching for the
scammers is like “looking
for needles in a haystack.” He
recommend that if the citizen
is going to throw the scam
mail away, make sure they
shred it.
“Citizens need to ask themselves
questions,” Turner said.
“If they have suffered a loss,
they should go to the police.
We have had some customers
who have negotiated checks
with scammers and have
lost part of that money. We
tell them to report it to the
police.
“Though they are overwhelmed
with this and it happens
every day of the week,
there is a little time frame.”
Audit finds county 911 certifications out of date
By Carol McLeod
Staff Writer
An audit on May 8 and 9 by the Georgia Crime Information Center, a branch of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, of Jefferson County’s 911 system showed seven of 11 operators
to be out of date on their certification, according to Maj. Charles Gibbons of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
According to John Bankhead, Director of Public Affairs for the GBI, every agency with a terminal that has access to the GCIC is audited every three years.
“It was a standard GCIC audit of the sheriff’s department,” Bankhead said.
“It’s a dispatch center and GCIC was over there, which is routine.
They audit every agency just about.
It’s just a routine audit. It was not an investigation.”
Bankhead said the process of reviewing the audit takes about three months to complete and, therefore, he said, could not address any specifics of the audit.
“If there are any issues that need to be resolved, the agency has a certain amount of time, if there are any, to make corrections,” he said.
“Nobody goes through an audit where you don’t find something.”
Gibbons addressed those issues.
“911 had some problem areas that were identified in the audit,” he said.
“The necessary steps are being taken to correct that.
As we speak, the women are working hard to make the necessary adjustments to correct that.
The sheriff is aware of everything that’s going on.
He has instructed me to make the necessary corrections that need to be done and I am doing that diligently and faithfully.”
Jefferson County Administrator Paul Bryan said, “I just know an audit was conducted as is normal over time. I know that we were written up but it’s normal that you get written up. I have spoken with the sheriff about that very thing this morning.”
Bryan said audits always show deficiencies that need to be addressed and that is why audits are held – to identify those deficiencies so they can be corrected.
“I know there were some issues about certifications and that’s all I know,” Bryan said.
“I do know that we have a 911trainer coming in from Greene County, we’ve been working with them in the past on many of our 911 issues.”
Gibbons said some of the certifications were not updated but at no time was the 911 center closed or prevented from continuing to operate.
“The certifications were not updated,” he said. “All this is being taken care of.”
“They (GCIC) don’t shut down anything until there’s a blatant intent to not comply with a GCIC rule,” Bankhead said. “And that is rare. Nothing about this whole scenario is unusual.”
“You can probably go to every sheriff’s office in the state of Georgia and find something. And I’m glad we had this. We know now what we need to do,” Gibbons said.
“We’ve never been shut down. I think that’s what happened. Somebody spread the rumor that we were shut done. We were never shut down. I’ve got my most trusted officer right here and she’s keeping me notified and she’s keeping the sheriff notified of everything that’s going on.”
Gibbons said the audit identified not only the center’s weak areas but also the strong areas.
“They didn’t criticize us,” he said. “The lady who came down was very helpful to us. We’re going to do what’s right for the citizens of this county. That’s who we work for.”
Judge to be officially reprimanded
By Faye Ellison
Staff Writer
Monday, the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission issued a press release stating that Glascock County Magistrate Judge Misty May would be publicly reprimanded during
court selection for a traverse jury Monday, May 21, at 9:30 a.m. in the courtroom at the Glascock County Courthouse. Judicial Qualifications Commission’s
Executive Director Cheryl F. Custer said Monday that Chief Judge Roger W. Dunaway Jr. will administer the reprimand pursuant to the Rule 4(e) of the Rules of the JQC and the terms of an agreed upon disposition of the investigation by the JQC into a complaint filed against Judge May. May said Tuesday that the complaint
was filed by the Glascock County Commissioners because of findings in a 2005 audit by Jones, Jones, Davis and Associates.
“We feel that the items enumerated
deserve immediate attention,” the 2005 audit stated. “Current bookkeeping practices in this office make it difficult, if not impossible, to properly audit the receipts and disbursements of the office.
We believe that acceptance of the recommendations will help establish practical and workable control mechanisms by which management and documentation
of this office’s transactions can be greatly improved.”
May explained that the reports must be filed every 30 days and admitted that sometimes her reports were past due on several occasions. She also said that she was in violation of not making deposits on time. “I chose to be held accountable for my actions due to a violation with Rule 4(e) pertaining to the administrative
duties not being completed in a timely manner,” May said adding that she planned to get past this next Monday and move on in doing her job.
May said this is the first time she had been reprimanded and she chose to have the public reprimand instead of filing an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court. She also stated that the investigation began into this “factual violation about a year and a half ago.
“I could have appealed it to the Supreme Court to review the investigation,” she said. “I chose not to go any further because the facts are the facts.”
May said this is the second time in two years a judge in the district had to be reprimanded, alluding to the public reprimand for the Magistrate Judge in McDuffie County two years ago after he was charged with driving under the influence.
May explained that Jones, Jones, Davis and Associates must report their findings to not only the commissioners, but also to the state.
“It was up to the commissioners to file a complaint,” she said. “And they chose to go ahead and file the complaint with the JQC.”
In September 2005, Glascock County Commission Chairman Anthony Griswell said that after the audit, they found that the money passing through the court was not tracked as thoroughly as it needed by the magistrate’s office.
“There was no money missing,” Commission Griswell said at the meeting. “The findings were more on how the books were kept.”
According to the county clerk, Jones, Jones, Davis and Associates was not completely finished with the county’s audit, but felt that their findings in the magistrate office needed to be dealt with as soon as possible.
They also offered recommendations to the court to solve problems they saw during the audit.
Magistrate Court Judge Misty May presented Glascock Commissioners with steps that the court would take to correct each of the six findings from the audit during a commission meeting after Jones, Jones, Davis and Associates notified commissioners of their findings.
“On behalf of the Magistrate Court of Glascock County, I as Chief Magistrate, with assistance from the Administrative Office of the Courts and the increase of office hours, will strive to keep future financial information as well as civil/criminal docketed/receipted cases handled in a timely and more orderly fashion,” May said in a statement to commissioners at the September 2005 monthly meeting.
Griswell said that commissioners received steps taken to “rectify the audit,” and after studying the steps, they will talk at a called meeting or the next monthly meeting. Then with the consensus of the board, corrective measures will be taken, he said.
In its first recommendation, the auditor recommends that the court should pay all plaintiffs in the same manner and that the policies and procedures should be applied equally to all the court’s participants.
To comply with the recommendation, May said that the court should pay all plaintiffs in the same manner. The local as well as the non-local plaintiffs will be paid by the 10th of the following month that funds are collected. No plaintiff locally will be able to pick up funds before the 10th of the following months in which the funds were collected.
The first finding included that the court’s bank account was overdrawn during the year. The audit states that eight checks were presented to the bank that overdrew the account in December 2004, but were paid by the bank because the court was considered a “preferred customer.”
Also in the finding, three checks were presented during the same month overdrawing the account because of insufficient funds.
“In a properly run office of this type, there would never be a situation where the bank account was overdrawn,” the audit stated.
“The bank account of the court was overdrawn only once in 2004 in December due to the acceptance of personal checks by two separate defendants who had insufficient funds in their accounts,” May said in a response to the audit. “Eight checks were presented to the bank which overdrew the account but were paid by the bank due to the preferred customer status of the court. Although this has never been a problem before, the court will no longer accept personal checks as a form of payment so as to prevent this from happening again. All bank reconciliations will be completed in a timely manner with an up-to-date bank balance for the checking account.”
The second finding according to the audit noted that cash receipt tickets were sometimes issued out of sequence. May said she was trying to use leftover receipts, but since the audit’s findings have been brought to her attention, she has ordered new receipts that will not have missing pages and any voided receipts will be attached to the monthly receipt page.
In the audit’s third finding, Jones, Jones, Davis and Associates noted instances when funds were not recorded in a timely manner. May said funds would no longer be accepted at any other location other than the office of the court during regular business hours because of the problem of not only being responsible for monies due to the court but also for the funds to be receipted in a timely manner.
“There were instances when a defendant would bring in or mail a personal check made payable to the plaintiff instead of the Magistrate Court,” May said in her response. “That check would be forwarded to the plaintiff.”
The fourth finding involved an instance of a receipt issued for an amount other than what was received on that date.
May noted that this occurred when a defendant paid an amount to the court in two different forms of payment and there should have been two separate receipts.
Jones, Jones, Davis and Associates recorded numerous extended delays from the time the Magistrate Court received funds until they were deposited into the bank. Some documented delays in depositing funds were up to and beyond three months.
“The limited time in the office for incoming clients and/or telephone calls to conduct business did not permit any set time or daily routine to complete paperwork to include deposits as needed therefore causing delays,” May responded.
She said the implementation plan that includes daily deposits and timely payouts, along with the May’s change to full-time status, will prove to be corrective steps that will lead to the office running as it should.
The last finding found that funds deposited for the court were unable to be matched with the composition of funds received either by cash or check. Many instances were noted when deposits were made with only checks or only cash.
May said a new column on the receipt page stating cash or check will be added.
At the end of their finding, Jones, Jones, Davis and Associates suggest the Magistrate Court have an imprest (petty cash) fund of up to $50 to make change in the court. May said she would have a $25 imprest fund for the court.
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