Scam artists try their luck in Commerce

While Commerce police reported only three incidents during the first week of the year, it appears that swindlers are trying to get off to a fast start in 2013.

A 37-year-old white female called police to her Crossing Place residence to complain about harassing phone calls from employees of the “Cash Advance Fraud Department” who claimed she’d not made any payments on a $300 loan deposited into her bank account.

The victim told police that she has a $500 loan from another company, which is about to be paid off, and she said that the callers — a male named “Romeo” and his supervisor, “Mark Massey” — asked her to confirm personal information, including her Social Security number. She told police she did not know how they obtained that information.



The woman said she’d received 18 calls from 10:34 a.m. to 5:32 p.m. on the same day, and at some point the callers asked whether she was “white or black” and made a number of inappropriate comments of a sexual nature. The woman said she’d managed to record some of the conversations.

The officer advised her not to answer further calls from the men.

In the other case, a 21-year-old white female on Hillcrest Drive told police that she’d been called by someone purporting to be from Publisher’s Clearing House, advising her that she’d won $856,000.

She got the suspect’s phone number and learned that he was located in Franklin, GA.

The officer called the man and when he asked the man for his date of birth, he “lost contact” with the suspect, the incident report said.