July 03, 2009 05:40 am To the editor: People tend to be compassionate — especially when a neighbor of ours might be in need and we can help. It is this positive attitude that I fear has allowed a group of unscrupulous outsiders to come to our Gloucester homes and take money from us that might have gone to a real local charity, such as The Open Door, formerly the Cape Ann Food Pantry. A few nights ago, there was a knock on my door. It was a reasonably well dressed young man. He appeared nervous, but immediately went into his pitch. The first thing that caused my antennae to go up was his presentation of a series of disjointed "facts." Here they are, summarized in a more logical order. He said he was the son of neighbor a few streets over; that he had just come from another neighbor who told him that he should come to my house because I was a "good guy"; that he was a college student and needed money to make a trip with his class; that a company gave him the opportunity to raise money by selling children's books that would be sent directly to the cancer ward of the Children's Hospital in Boston. I asked the name of the company, and he said Dynasty Sales, LLC. I told him that I would investigate the company and he should come back. I immediately went on the Internet and instantaneously found numerous citations on the company. The first listing was from a site called "Rip-Off Reports." As it turned out, there were several entries on this site about Dynasty Sales from people around the country; each report, from individuals who believed they had been scammed, read exactly like the script I had just heard from the young man a few minutes before. He had given me his name and I checked that out as well. There was no family with that name on the street he mentioned. I called the neighbor whom the young man mentioned. He said that indeed the young man did come to his house and told the same story. Being a kind-hearted soul, my neighbor gave the man $98 in cash. The neighbor also saw a check that the young man had received from yet another neighbor. We happened to have a visitor at our house during this incident and told her about it. When she returned to her home in Bay View, she mentioned it to her husband and was dismayed to learn that he had just had a visit from a young woman who said she was a neighbor. She then presented exactly the same story as the young man, including the part about being referred by another neighbor. Only, in her version, the company mentioned was Prestige Sales. Our visitor's husband had given the young woman a check for $40. When the Bay View couple discussed this with the referring neighbor who had also contributed, that woman called the police and found that it was OK, because Prestige Sales had registered with the police. According to Rip-Off Reports, however, Dynasty Sales and Prestige Sales are part of the same organization based in Arizona. They ply the country pulling this same rip-off using the same approach. They apparently come in teams which travel the neighborhoods together hitting as many households as possible before they are "outed." How do they stay in business? It may be that they are able to skirt the laws by registering with the local police, and when investigated, are able to show records that they do make some donations to charities. But the amount they actually contribute is a tiny fraction of what they take in. But the most galling part of their approach is that they claim they are neighbors and present a series of lies aimed at getting their victims to want to help them on the spot with a contribution. The bottom line is, if you have people you don't know coming to your front door or calling you on the telephone with a story that makes you feel like a heel if you don't contribute, check them out before making a contribution. Tell them to come back. Or, better yet, turn them down and use your money for the real, local charities that are the ultimate victims of these swindlers. Anthony J. Marolda Annisquam
—
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.