The Better Business Bureau released a report this week warning consumers to protect themselves from a scam aimed at school districts and offices.
The Scholastic Corporation is a company very familiar to anyone who works in a school or has children in school. Scholastic supplies education resources-- everything from books to paper to teacher aide tools. However, you may not have heard of the Scholastic School Supply. The two companies have nothing to do with each other.
The Scholastic School Supply company is a scam. Consumers alleged the fake business is sending out fake invoices to schools and districts in the amount of $647.50 for bulk purchases of text books that were never purchased or received.
Alaska regional manager for the Better Business Bureau Michelle Tabler says this scheme has a familiar feel.
“So it’s really common for scammers to use similar names of well-known businesses to make their cons seem more legitimate. So far, we’ve hear 22 states have been effected we suspect its moving west. I think there’s already been reports in Washington, we suspect it will be coming up at any time now in Oregon and Alaska.”
The invoices from the Scholastic School Supply company list an address in Nevada but the BBB in Nevada did not find any corporation filings, business licensing or other documentation for the company in the state. The BBB in Nevada is receiving about 15 complaints a day regarding this scam.
Tabler issued a warning to the Anchorage School District and the State of Alaska. She says the best way a school can protect itself against this scam is by making sure the person in charge of making orders double checks all invoices.
“Sometimes inexperienced people in the front office that gathering these don’t know the difference or don’t know that these should not be paid. So we encourage people to really look to make sure this order has really been made. Make sure that the invoice is coming from a valid source, I mean look at this, everyone knows the Scholastic name but this is called Scholastic School Supply which is different than what we’re used to and check out who the company is that’s sending the invoice.”
Tabler says if the invoice doesn’t look right the best thing to do is a basic internet search-- copy and paste the letter into a search engine and chances are, if it’s a scam, someone else will have posted something about it.