SCAMMERS TARGET SMALL BUSINESSES IN OCEAN CITY

Several merchants are speaking out after scammers have continuously attempted to victimize their businesses.

Skip Tolomeo, the owner of Sea Oats, a Children's clothing store on Asbury Avenue in Ocean City, said a Toronto based scammer has been exploiting his company for the past 2 years.

As part of the scam, Tolomeo's account information was stolen and people throughout the country, who were told they had won a secret shoppers sweepstakes, cashed bogus checks with Tolomeo's account information on them worth $4,500.

In order to complete the sweepstakes the victims were instructed to use $150 to buy merchandise at a retail store, fill out a form critiquing the store's service, and then mail the critique to a P.O. box number according to Tolomeo.

He said the "sweepstakes winners" were then asked to wire $1,500 to an account number. After the money was sent the victims would get their money but instead they found out the checks were bogus leaving them without their "prize winnings" and their $1,500.

"How they ever got a hold of that check and reproduced it, I just will never know and that's the scary part, you have to be very vigilant on all things you do," said Tolomeo.

Sea Oats received calls about the bogus checks from people in 48 states according to Tolomeo. The owner said he had to shut down the account to stop the scammer from trying to exploit his business.

Tolomeo estimates that if all the checks had been processed, his company would have lost nearly $300,000 in the last 2 years.

John Szabo, the owner of Positively 4th Street Café & Coffee Bar in Ocean City has also been targeted by scammers.

Szabo said the business receive 3 calls a week from a person placing a large order for chicken salad sandwiches.

"What happens is they dial a number and they get a deaf relay operator and the deaf relay operates as a middle person so I never hear the scammer," said Szabo.

The scammer orders around 200 sandwiches, pays with a stolen credit card and then asks to have the sandwiches delivered to a personal deliveryman.

"What they want us to do is run the charge, but in addition they want us to wire them money to pay for the delivery fee which is often $1000 to $2000," said Szabo.

Szabo said he caught on to the scam and will not follow through with the order unless enough identification is produced to prove it is not a scammer.
In wake of the local scam attempts the Ocean City police are asking all merchants to be very cautious of how they do business.

"If you are a merchant, and something doesn't feel right, you need to call us right away, you can't wait a day, you can't wait 2 days," said Captain Steven Ang with the Ocean City Police Department. "Get that reported to us immediately and we can get on top of it."