This evening a nicely dressed college aged man came by and introduced himself. He said he lived down the road and he was raising money to go to a badminton trip to nationals for a local college team. He talked for awhile telling me what local church he goes to and what he was majoring in. Then he said that his mom came up with the idea that he could sell magazine subscriptions to raise the money for his trip and if you didn't want the magazines then they could be sent to service people in Iraq instead. He even said his brother was serving over there and told me which company.
I gave him a check for 49.00 for 2 one year subscriptions for service people in Iraq. He said that his mom would come by later this week to tell us when his badminton team would be playing so we could watch on TV. He even offered to come by and rake leaves or mow our lawn in exchange for our support. Then he wrote me a receipt and left.
I got suspicious later thinking about a few inconsistencies in his story and looked up the badminton team at our local college. There is no badminton team currently. Then I googled the name of the magazine company and came across other reports of ripoffs with very similar stories. I called our bank and cancelled the check and notified our local police. The police said there was nothing they could do but at least they won't be getting my money. I am just out the check cancellation fee. Lesson learned.
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