This came to my attention when my daughter mentioned her fiance' getting an unsolicited 'credit card' in the mail, a 'credit card' with no Master Card, Visa, American Express nor Discover logo. I also found it odd that he would get a card with a large credit limit considering he's an immigrant here on a work visa and has yet to establish credit with any of the bureaus.
His Engish is very good as he's been here a bit over a year but he's still not familiar with schemes that go on like this and does not understand all the 'small print' legalese so he had given it to my daughter. When she told me the name it sounded familiar so I looked it up on the internet and found this site.
Fortunately, he had not called the company to activate it but I've advised her to have that bank account closed and open a new one anyway, just in case.
The reason this sounded familiar is because back in the late 80's, this same type of thing happened in Maryland (Bowie and other towns because he had so many PO boxes). The company started out touting "Santo Gold" jewelry then he (Santo Rigatuso a/k/a Bob Harris and other alias') went into the 'credit card' business. He ended up in a federal prison (federal country club) for mail fraud and other charges I believe.
While the basic precept behind his 'company' and 'credit cards' was legitimate, he apparently wasn't careful enough in how he worded things in his mailings and it seems the company was so disorganized that there were serious CS issues regarding shipments, refunds, etc.
I can only recommend that everyone read all the fine print and if you don't understand it, ask someone else.
0 comments