According to NCL's Fraud Center, several newspapers in Pennsylvania and at least one funeral home in Washington state have received faxes from the Caribbean requesting that information about their prices be faxed to "809" numbers. The company that asked for the newspaper advertising rate information claims to be planning a summer campaign for a new beachfront hotel in the Dominican Republic. The request for faxed information says that "because of start-up pressures, we don't have time to take phone calls nor do we need fedexed materials."
The pitch to the funeral home is purportedly from the employee of a company on behalf of the president of the firm, whose father is seriously ill and not expected to live long. "With the father's illness and impending death coupled with our present national and international expansion, there's just too much going on to receive and make phone calls on this matter," explains the employee.
Coincidence? Maybe, or this may simply be a new way of generating international phone charges, from which people may be profiting by getting kickbacks or commissions from the foreign phone companies. Businesses who receive these requests should find out from their long-distance carriers how much it would cost to fax their responses, and weigh the expense against the possibility that these prospective "customers" have no intention of actually purchasing goods or services from them.
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