^[1]

Who'd like to buy this 65-inch Samsung plasma TV new-in-the-box for $390? Don't all stampede at once: The deal just might be too good to be true. (Hint hint: It is!)

LOCAL SECURITY GUARD  WIRES DEPOSIT
FOR NEW-IN-THE-BOX LARGE PLASMA TV
AT PRICE THAT’S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

Classified ads used to fleece unwitting buyers;
Consumer Protection Division refuses to help

By Alan Z. Forman

How would you like to buy a new-in-the-box never-been-used 65-inch flat-screen plasma TV for under $400?

Sound too good to be true? Well, maybe that’s because it is.

Baltimore security guard Cynthia Green found out the hard way. She answered what seemed to be a reasonable classified ad; talked by cellphone to a woman with a Russian accent offering the television set for sale; and wired her a good faith deposit of $100.

That was the last she saw of her money. The last communication she had with the seller (except for several hang-up phone calls).

And the TV set?

The TV set was never really in the mix.

So, being the good citizen that she is, and expecting that the government to which she pays her taxes would help her, the security guard turned for assistance last week to the Maryland Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division. Surely they could help her try to get her $100 back.

Or could they?

Or, to put it another way:  Would they?

STATE AGENCY REFUSES TO HELP

The answer is No. Nor would they respond to requests from Voice of Baltimore for comment regarding their refusal.

“We can’t help you,” the 45-year-old security guard was told by Alice Katsianos, a management associate in the AG’s Consumer Protection Division, the state agency charged with responsibility for helping consumers who have, among other things, been rooked like Cynthia Green.

Armed with Walmart MoneyGram stubs, fax records and voicemail/text messages on her cellphone, Green was told by Katsianos there was no need for the AG’s protection division to make copies of anything, because, she told Green, “There’s nothing we can do to help you.”

That admission came after Katsianos had initially refused to even see Green, telling her by phone to fax all her information to the Consumer Protection Division.

“But how,” asked Green, “could I fax cellphone messages and a lot of texts?” And how, she wondered, could she detail a story of fraud and deception to a state agency that obviously wasn’t interested in her problem? despite its mandate to help her.

‘NOTHING THEY COULD DO’

“They told me there was nothing they could do about it,” she explained to VoB in a telephone interview earlier this week, “because it didn’t involve a store, like Walmart, or JC Penney.”

However the scam has operated in at least 15 states, at such a low level that neither the attorneys general nor the newspapers that unwittingly run the bogus ad have been willing to intervene.

The story begins in late October with the Baltimore Sun, which repeatedly ran a three-line classified ad offering the TV for sale, an advertisement that, unbeknownst to Green — and apparently not to advertising executives at The Sun as well — also ran in many other newspapers throughout the country, including the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News, as well as the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Houston Chronicle and Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, among others, including an online listing on Craigslist.org.

Obviously not a lone television set for sale by a consumer hoping to unload an unused piece of merchandise, as implied in the ad:

“PLASMA TV Samsung: Still in the box. Never used! 65 in. with surround subwoofer system. Purchased in 2011. $390. 410-734-6401 or 561-876-7199.”

QUITE A BARGAIN

Even a used version of the set sells for over $2,000. On Wednesday, Amazon.com listed one for $2,299, along with a “refurbished” model for $1,728.99

New 65-inch plasma TVs sell online for anywhere from $2,215 to $4,500, depending on specific features. Some discount stores offer stripped-down versions of slightly smaller large-screen sets for $1,000-$1,200.

A new-in-the-box 65-inch Samsung for under $400 would thus be quite a bargain. And would likely sell pretty quickly, one would think.

Assuming you actually get the TV set, that is.

Cynthia Green wired her $100 deposit, plus $54.72 for shipping, to the purported seller, one Karin Nausederova, on Oct. 21, after being told, she said, “If you like it, then you pay the difference.”

The address she sent the money to — in West Palm Beach Florida — turned out to be a mail drop at Mailboxes.com.

When Green asked to come over to see the set — Nausederova had indicated by text message that she lived in Glen Burnie, not far from the security guard’s home in Cherry Hill — Green said she was told that the set was in fact in Florida, where Nausederova was supposedly moving.

DID NOT ANSWER CELLPHONE

So Green wired the money via Walmart MoneyGram. But next morning, when she called to find out what day the TV was to be shipped, the seller did not answer her cellphone nor did she respond to texts.

Sensing that something was amiss, Green then called using her son’s cellphone and recognized Nausederova’s voice, who said something was wrong with her phone — “It’s breaking up,” she said — but told Green to send the rest of the money.

After that, there were no more conversations. Nausederova never answered her phone again.

Fast-forward to Dec. 6, the first of several unsuccessful attempts by Voice of Baltimore to determine why the Maryland Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division wouldn’t help the victim.

During that week, Green told VoB she contacted the Miami Police Dept. and talked to “the Florida police, [who] acted like they knew about the lady.”

They should. There are ripoff reports all over the Web warning consumers to be wary of the similarly spelled “Karina Knausederova” for scams involving everything from Internet fraud to bogus nanny/childcare and cleaning services, much of it in South Florida, where the scam artist is apparently based.

DID THE SUN DO THE RIGHT THING?

And what of the Baltimore Sun? When notified that Green was being ripped off, did The Sun do the right thing?

Well, Yes… and No.

In early November, when former Sun reporter Joseph Challmes, who lives in the midtown apartment building where Cynthia Green works, notified The Sun’s Senior Vice President of Sales Joe Brenneman via email through an intermediary about the bogus ad, Brenneman messaged back that The Sun had “determined that it should be cancelled” and that “all future insertions were deleted.”

In addition, “the Attorney General’s office has been notified,” Brenneman reported, adding: “I wish there was a way to completely prevent fraud in this world.”

However the ad exec noted that despite “every effort to ensure that fraudulent ads do not appear in our sections… all of those efforts can’t guarantee that every ad placed under false pretenses is prevented from making it” into the newspaper.

CONTINUED TO APPEAR REPEATEDLY

As such, the ad continued to appear repeatedly in The Sun for at least two to three more weeks, although at present it no longer seems to be running.

The question is, how will The Sun, and other newspapers, protect readers from being scammed in the future?

Will they be aggressive — or lax — in screening ads?

And will consumer protection agencies, like the one in Maryland, assist citizens who have been scammed?

Or continue to ignore them? as happened to Cynthia Green — or even lie to them?

When Green first contacted the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division, she was told — despite their notification weeks before by Senior Vice President Brenneman of The Sun — that the agency had no knowledge whatsoever of the bogus ad.

Former Sun reporter Joseph Challmes contributed to this report.

alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org