NU officials warn of campus phone fraud

By Michael McIntyre
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

Age, skin color, and religion don't matter when a con artist is looking for a victim.

Each year telephone fraud costs the telecommunications industry more than $4 billion dollars. According to the official AT&T Website, these costs are ultimately passed on to the consumer.

Over the past few years, Norwich University has been subject to failed attempts at various schemes. And university officials warn that anyone can be a victim of phone fraud.

The most recent example has come in the form of people posing as associates of President Richard Schneider, according to Dave Magida, Chief Admin. Officer of Norwich University. On two separate occasions this year, the unidentified people behind the scheme would claim to have "some type of relationship" with Schneider.

"They said that they were either a friend of President Schneider or a family member, or a law firm working with President Schneider's family," Magida said. "Another one was that they were President Schneider's family physician, and that is what they used to get to a person."

After attempting to establish their false identity, the schemers then claimed to be working for an organization that was about to go bankrupt, and therefore had a real "special deal" for the university.

"The stuff that they are trying to sell is office supplies, office furniture, custodial supplies, paper goods and printing paper," Magida said.

The location of the schemers was never found. Another question left unanswered was whether the goods they were trying to sell were stolen.

According to Magida, there was never any doubt whether the calls were legitimate. He said other university officials were notified immediately to be aware of the scam.

"They certainly were geared up to handle credit cards and purchase orders from the university," Magida said.

Magida stated that whether the callers were actually prepared to send the goods, had an order ever been placed, is also unknown.

A similar situation occurred on campus a couple of years ago. Much like the recent case, the people behind the scam were unsuccessful at unloading any of their merchandise or extorting any money from the university.

The legitimacy of this case was obviously fraudulent when the so-called close friends of Schneider mispronounced the his last name over the phone.

"If you are a close personal friend of someone, you would think you would know how to pronounce their name," Magida said.

After receiving the calls, Magida took the proper steps to discourage them from trying again.

According to Magida, the mispronunciation wasn't the only clue that the call was a scam.

"President Schneider would never ever use his relations with anybody in any way to influence Norwich business; he just would never do that; he is not that type of man.," Magida stressed. "It is not an ethical way of running a business."

Magida pointed out that there were other reasons why the first attempted scam did not work. For instance, it occurred during the summertime, when there are significantly fewer people on campus.

Also, the callers were attempting to sell copiers and copier supplies.

Magida stated that placing any orders with the imposters was never considered, because the university has a contract for copiers with another company.

Magida explained to the callers that phone fraud is a crime and that he would be contacting the authorities. Each time they simply hung up and did not call again.

"I contacted the phone company when this happened a couple of years ago. They said the best thing to do is just get a message out to your community. It gets to be quite an elaborate scheme to try to catch these folks," Magida said.

"The likelihood of something like this actually making it through so that we end up spending university dollars improperly is very low. There are a lot of checks and balances here, and they work," Magida said.

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