Short Sugars squeals on barbecue scam

Someone tried to swindle $1,600 from Short Sugar’s Bar-B-Q through an elaborate phone scam that involved a phone service for the deaf, a faux catering company and 50 pounds of barbecue.

Kevin Ainsworth, the restaurant’s general manager, said someone used AT&T Relay Services to call the business on Aug. 12. The service allows anyone with a hearing or speech impairment to make a call online. The caller goes to a Web site, types in a phone number and an AT&T operator places the call. The caller types his end of the conversation, the operator recites it, the other person responds and the operator types the response for the caller.

Ainsworth said the operator explained the process and asked if they would accept the call. They did.

The caller ordered 50 pounds of barbecue, buns and about two gallons of sauce for pick-up last Saturday, Ainsworth said. A catering company would get the barbecue and deliver it to the caller.

“He said, ‘I can give you my credit card number, go ahead and charge the whole amount,’” Ainsworth said.

The barbecue-orderer wanted Short Sugar’s to charge the card for the barbecue plus the $600 that the catering company would charge. He asked Short Sugar’s to wire $600 to the faux company after charging the credit card.

Ainsworth said that as soon as the caller asked them to wire money, they knew it was a scam and started checking the caller’s information.

“You never wire money,” he said. “We were sitting there, going online while he’s talking.”

The man wanted the barbecue delivered to an apartment complex in Savannah, Ga. The phone number he gave Short Sugar’s was from Seattle, and the nameless catering company’s information put the business in St. Louis at an address that wasn’t a real address, Ainsworth said.

They kept talking with the person to get details to pass along to the police, Ainsworth said, and the owner, Donnie Jones, spoke to an officer about the scam last week.

Lt. John Henderson said he hasn’t heard of that particular scam, but cons like that are always around.

“Anytime you have to send somebody money you don’t know for some service that you don’t already have, I would be highly suspicious,” said Henderson, a spokesman for the Danville Police Department. “People pretend to be somebody else all the time, either through the mail, e-mail or on the phone.”