Heads-up: Another possible scam

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

LIBLICENSE readers:

Apologies for cross-posting, but I have a heads-up regarding what 
looks like another vendor scam.

Today I received a "collection notice" from Credit Mediators, 
Inc. (CMI).  It referenced an outstanding invoice from Thomson 
Scientific in the amount of $416.90, and directed us to send a 
check within 48 hours -- but the check was to be made payable to 
CMI, not to Thomson.  This smelled very, very scammy to me, so I 
called my rep at Thomson to see what was going on.  He said he'd 
never heard of CMI and asked me to fax a copy of the notice to 
him so that he could have his people look into it.  They're doing 
so now.

In the meantime, I called CMI and spoke with someone named Ben 
Roberts. Our conversation reminded me of a similar conversation I 
once had with a certain "Mrs. Larson" at "Pentium Capital" a year 
or so ago; he was aggressive, unhelpful, unwilling to answer the 
most basic questions, and unwilling to direct me to others at his 
company who might be able to answer them.

I'm still waiting to hear back from Thomson.  It's possible that 
they really did engage the services of CMI to collect on an old 
invoice.  But it seems highly unlikely.  Normally a vendor or 
publisher will just call me up and say "Hey, why hasn't this 
invoice been paid yet" rather than ask a third party to send a 
collection notice that doesn't include a copy of the invoice (or 
even cite an invoice number) and that asks for the money to be 
sent to that third party rather than the publisher to whom it's 
owed.

Although I'm still waiting for word back from Thomson Scientific, 
I thought it would be worthwhile to send a heads-up in case other 
listmembers have received similar mailings in the last day or 
two.  Once I know for sure what's going on, I'll send out a quick 
update message. In the meantime, you all might want to check with 
your staff and make sure no one is expediting payment on one of 
these notices.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu