My daughter was approached by a young man while she was visiting with one of her friends at her home in Aug. Both girls were 16 years old and were easily persuaded to purchase 2 magazines each, one at $42 and one at $47 for each girl. They had both just started working at their first jobs and I had just opened checking and savings accounts for my daughter. My daughter's friend didn't have any money so my daughter offered to write checks for both of their purchases with her friend repaying her when she got her paycheck. When I found out later that day what had happened, I tried to call the company, but the phone just rang and rang. There was no voice mail or answering machine. I continued to try to call for about a week. I went to the local police dept the evening of the sale and was told a crime had not yet been committed. We had to either cancel or give the company time to send the magazines. If no magazines arrived, then that would be a crime. I was told by the police to fill out the cancellation notice and send it certified mail to prove they had received it. Guess what, no one was there to sign for it and several weeks later, I was made aware of that by the post office. I went to the bank and talked to a representative about cancelling the checks, but that cost $20 per check (she wrote a check for each magazine) and the threat of a $30 fee per check from the company for cancelling the checks. If you do the math, it potentially would have cost us $200 to go that route.
Here it is March and still no magazines. I am going back to the police dept and filing a report. I don't know if they can help us or not. This type of con must be very easy to pull off, especially if they prey on teenagers. I would think this would be illegal (even if the company were legitimate) as the victims were minors.
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