Two scams target unwary Utahns

Police and even intended victims are warning the public about a pair of scams making their rounds in Utah that involve perpetrators looking at classified ads.

The first involves people skimming "for sale" ads and offering to send significantly more money than the seller is asking.

Shawn Hugh advertised his 1981 Honda motorcycle on KSL's Web site. He got an e-mail from a man who said he was interested. After a few e-mails back and forth the man agreed to buy the motorcycle.

But the man then said he wanted to send Hugh a check for $8,000 for the $1,500 motorcycle. He wanted Hugh to ship the motorcycle to Canada.

Immediately Hugh saw red flags.

"After that I called police," he said. "The detective said, 'Oh yeah, this is fraud."'

Hugh continued his correspondence with the alleged buyer to see what he would do. They actually talked once on the phone. The buyer had a thick, foreign accent, Hugh said. When he tried calling the man back on the number from his caller ID, no one answered.

The man ended up sending a check to Hugh from New Jersey. The check was from a bank in Florida.

Hugh gave the check to Salt Lake City police who discovered through the Florida bank that several others had already been victims of the same scam. Victims would wire the change from the large check to the alleged buyer. But when the check the victim received was finally processed about 45 days later, it turned out to be fake and the victim was left paying back the bank.

Hugh's advice to other residents is to ask themselves if they would trust a complete stranger with a couple of thousand dollars.

"Don't trust anyone you don't know. There are not that many good people who are out there who would (send a large check on good faith)," he said. "There's good people out there. I just don't think they'd do a a deal like this in this manner. It would usually be face to face."

In another scam unrelated to the first, someone has been calling homes in Utah and around the nation claiming to be from a yellow pages company without specifically giving a business name.

A customer service representative at Dex said for the past month she had been taking an average of four calls a day from people around the nation reporting the apparent scam. She is one of just 30 to 35 customer service representatives working at one time.