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Bank bomb threat was result of international scam
[March 23, 2010]

Bank bomb threat was result of international scam


SUNNYSIDE, Mar 23, 2010 (Yakima Herald-Republic - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Federal investigators said Monday that a bomb threat at a downtown bank last week was part of an international fraud scheme that went dangerously awry.



A 38-year-old Sunnyside man initially taken into custody Thursday at Bank of America was likely the victim of "a dangerous twist on an increasingly common fraud scheme," said Frank Harrill, supervisory senior resident agent of the FBI's Spokane office.

The man, who has since been released, apparently fell for a fraud that used text messages and cellular phone calls from a foreign country telling him that he'd won an international lottery or cash prize, Harrill said.


To claim the prize, he wired the callers money, supposedly for taxes, Harrill said.

On Thursday, he went to the bank to set up an account to receive his expected winnings, Harrill said. While there, he handed his cell phone to a teller while the con artist was on the line, Harrill said.

When the caller realized that bank employees suspected foul play, he made a bomb threat, possibly out of spite, Harrill said.

Bank personnel called 9-1-1 and evacuated everybody except the man and one employee. When police arrived, they took the man into custody as a "person of interest." He has since been released.

Harrill said investigators are still unsure of the caller's ultimate motives, or where he was calling from.

"I don't really know what the endgame was supposed to be here," he said. "The people that do this have no conscience in the first place." Harrill warned people to be on their guard for fraud. There is no valid international lottery and no legitimate contest will ask the winner to pay money up front, he said.

Harrill said he had never heard of a fraud scheme that put someone physically in harm's way like this one.

The first part of last week's incident, called an advance fee scam, is common, said Jason Boone, a research assistant for the National White Collar Crime Center in Washington, D.C. And a few years ago, those same scammers began venturing into bomb threats if banks or retailers did not deposit money into foreign accounts as instructed, Boone said.

However, operating "live" through a human victim like last week is unusual, Boone said, because it takes away the perpetrator's biggest asset: anonymity.

"I'm at a loss as to why he tried to do that," Boone said.

Boone suspected the alleged scammer was "unseasoned" and resorted to the bomb threat when the original con didn't work.

"(Overseas) scams succeed much of the time because of their anonymity, but when you have an 'in-person victim' at the bank, law enforcement agencies will act very quickly and the scammer is completely out of options," Boone said.

--Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8978 or [email protected].

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