http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA435125.html?text=nigerianThe perpetrators of advance fee fraud, or 419 scams as they are also known, based on the section of the Nigerian penal code addressing fraud schemes, are "very creative and innovative," warns the Secret Service, one of several government agencies addressing the problem. The 118-store LifeWay Christian Store chain learned just how creative last year, when it began receiving large telephone orders for Bibles with ship-to addresses in Nigeria and the U.K. Later orders arrived with U.S. delivery addresses for shipments to be forwarded to Nigeria."To date, we have stopped approximately $190,000 of fraudulent shipments," Melissa Mitchell, loss prevention director, toldPW. In spring of last year, she first noticed a pattern of "charge backs," or credit card purchases, denied by customers that all had one thing in common: they were being shipped to Nigeria. Because credit card fraud, which Mitchell likens to "counterfeiting without making all the money" (i.e., no physical money is produced), often involves stealing the numbers from credit cards while victims still have the physical card tucked safely in their wallet, it can go undetected for as much as 20 days.*snip*Deaf Relay SystemTo counter the scam, LifeWay began accepting telephone orders for shipments to Africa only through its online catalogue store. That expanded to all telephone orders placed to individual stores, especially when the Nigerians tried to get shipments through London, a not uncommon practice. The orders stopped entirely, only to resume with a request for two genuine leather Bibles valued at $500 that came in to the LifeWay store in Baltimore through the deaf relay system. This communications system allows deaf or hearing-impaired people to talk over the phone. They place a voice or text telephone (TTY) call to an operator who then calls the other party and relays the conversation between the two parties, again either by voice or text. It's time consuming because all the communication goes through the operator who has to "translate" everything to the person receiving the call."The deaf relay system can be a very arduous process," explained Mitchell, "and there's a tendency not to ask as many questions as you normally would. The assistant manager in Baltimore, Cindy Stewart, didn't have a good feeling about the order, and she called back the customer. A different individual answered, but in the background she heard the same man on another phone order the same merchandise with the same credit card number."To stop the Nigerian scam and other credit card fraud, Mitchell reminds booksellers that just because a charge is authorized does not mean that it will be paid by the customer. "Most credit card companies, in order to secure the transaction, require that you get the three-digit security code and bill to and ship to addresses," she notes, having relearned this the hard way by letting a few of the early Nigerian scam shipments go through.

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I may be your operator, but I am NOT your bitch!