Swindlers involve Hatboro company in mail scam

A Hatboro company is unhappy to find itself as the face of a massive mail scam.

Con artists have sent out thousands of fraudulent offers with a real company’s name.

The letter in the mail comes with a check — and instructions: Keep $300, spend $150, and wire back the remaining $1,000 via Western Union. Unfortunately the check is a fake, but the bank may not figure that out before the victim is out a thousand bucks.

In this instance, Bob Norman said the the swindlers ncluded the name of a real firm — Delta Market Research where he is a vice president.i

“It started with a phone call. It always starts with a phone call. Somebody called us. Then more people called us,” he said. “Then more people called us.”

Through those phone calls, Norman says, the company was able to deter more than a hundred people from participating.

However, he says, scams like this one have plagued his industry for years. He blames Western Union and banks for not flagging the transactions and shutting the whole thing down.

Western Union spokeswoman Kristin Kelly says the company cannot keep up with the different types of scams launched all the time. She says Western Union has decided to focus on consumer education, advising consumers not to wire money to people they don’t know.