this morning in the post i got an “invoice” from some company called midway publications [address: 403 berey buildings, 33 george street liverpool L3 9LU]. the invoice purported to be for some advert or other and was for £99. it was about as convincing as mike tyson in drag, but i thought to myself “i wonder - what with so many companies having such a big turnover of mail and invoices and the like - whether quite a lot of accounts departments would just send out a cheque automatically without going to all the hassle of checking it was kosher first?”
strangely enough, last week i got another scouser scam letter. this time from data collection services [of city buildings 21-23 old hall street, liverpool L3 9BS]. that was a form to fill in to register with the ‘data protection act‘ complete with dire warnings about huge fines for business who failed to register. there was [naturally!] a fee of £95 to pay on submission of the form. the only trouble is that last time i checked, it only cost £35 to register with the data protection act and it was administered by the government and [incredibly enough!] not by some anonymous swindlers in liverpool. but still, i wonder how many people will fall for that scam and basically pay DCS £55 to post a letter for them?
followup 23 march 2005:
i’m glad i’m not the only one to have spotted this as an obvious scam. i’m also glad i didnae bother taking the crap round to the police, if the interest they showed in this guy when he did so is anything to go by.
this scam is also mentioned here and here. persistent buggers, aren’t they?
