Company's stolen data used in scam

Fake checks made with financial information from trucking business

Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

A family-owned trucking company in Claremont has been used in an international fake-check scam, officials at the Better Business Bureau said Friday.

Financial information, including bank account numbers, were stolen from Freedom Transportation and used to generate fake checks that were sent all over the world, said Janet Hart, a spokeswoman for the BBB of Southern Piedmont.

The checks were printed with Freedom Transportation's name, address and bank account routing number and were accompanied by a letter that said the recipient had won a home improvement grant, said company owner Kathy Gregory.

In most cases, she said, a $4,900 check arrived with a letter telling the recipients that they had won $34,000.

The recipients were asked to cash the checks and were told they'd receive the balance of their prize money after they had sent at least $3,100 to another bank account, usually in another country, to cover taxes and fees.

"A few days later, the `winners' found out that the original check was fake and that they had lost the money they sent," Hart said.

Neither Gregory nor Hart knew how many of the fake checks had been cashed.

In the past four weeks, Freedom Transportation and the company's bank have received several hundred calls from people across the country asking about the letter or saying the cashed checks had bounced.

"I just hate that there are poor people out there who have cashed these checks, and now the banks are wanting their money back," Gregory said.

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