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Back in the late nineties a variation on this was for the scammer to call and say you'd be featured on some cable business show hosted by a big shot ex-politician. When they called me it was Casper Weinberger, but I remember hearing about other names too. The catch was that you had to pay the production costs of $15-25k.

More info: http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-954-461-2100/2

This is also a common charity tactic. They throw a big dinner party honoring some rich guy, then shake down all his friends to pay for tables at dinner.




I've been there. We had a new person in the office who didn't believe that such scams could exist, so for the lulz they were assigned to deal with the person. They could say whatever they wanted as long as they didn't agree to pay.

The salesguy ended up screaming at our person who was just playing dumb.

It's also the "Who's Who" scam, where they print your name in a book of important people and sell you the book, or the "You Won A Poetry Content" that Dave Barry had so much fun with. http://www.miamiherald.com/2007/07/22/165002/poetic-license-...


We've had several of these companies approach our agriculture software company over the years. The key phrase to listen for is "scheduling fee" as that's what they call the $15k - $25k fee.

The most recent pitch was last year and the special host was to be Terry Bradshaw.


This still happens. Saw it last year at the company I was working for at the time.


1-954 a classic Fort Lauderdale area code. South Florida is like the Silicon Valley of scam businesses, with a gloried history.




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