Lion Distributing, Inc. Placed me in Hot Water with my Boss at work. Con/Scam!! Reisterstown Maryland

This is what I have found about the toner cartridge scam. WHAT THEY DID IS ILLEGAL and NOT YOUR FAULT! SHOW THIS TO YOUR BOSS.

There are at least 16 Phone scams posted on another website called 800notes

All you have to do is answer YES to any simple question they may ask - they then edit the recording they are making of your call to indicate that you agreed to something that you NEVER AGREED TO. This recording will not stand up to forensic evaluation (court ordered review - by law enforcement - the edits will be found)

In the case below has to do with Toner Cartridges and a few wording changes and it can be any supplies routinely used in business offices. They pretend to be the company you normally order supplies from.

Phone Toner Scam: The scam artist poses as a warehouse representative or vendor and makes contact with a targeted company. He will say "This is (first name), I need the model number off your copier". If the person who answers gives this info, the scammers will try to set up a shipment of toner. Of course, the deal is so good that the offer is based on a limited supply or limited time, pressuring the employee to act fast and get their money's worth. Upon delivery, both the employee and the company are usually in for a big surprise. The price of the invoiced toner is 2-3 times higher than expected, and the scam artist threatens with legal fines if the company fails to pay.


I have received the toner cartridge scam call as well as a scam call offering telcom services at my office. KNEW BOTH WERE SCAMS and cut both callers off very quickly. I even told the telecom services lady that I knew about this scam and she said nothing to refute it.

MORE INFO ON HOW THEY SCAM YOU - AGAIN NOT YOUR FAULT!

Telemarketers Settle Charges of Misleading Consumers with "Free" Product Pitches

6 Apr 2009
The Federal Trade Commission and Attorney General of Kentucky say they caught several telemarketing companies placing unauthorized charges on people's credit cards and bank accounts. The culprits claimed to be calling on behalf of a major retailer or credit card company.

The complaint alleged that the defendants called consumers with promises of free gift cards, gas cards, or resort vacations. The defendants then used a variety of means to trick consumers into saying the word yes, which the defendants then used as their purported authorization to bill the consumers. For example, in some cases, the defendants told consumers they had to confirm their acceptance of the free goods or services being offered.

In other instances, the defendants asked consumers to help them by listening to a pretend telemarketing pitch, answering yes when prompted, and then rating the defendants' sales skills: these consumers were told that they could cancel later in the call, after the recording was completed. The complaint charged that the defendants' telemarketers often read their pitch so rapidly that many consumers did not understand or realize they were agreeing to pay for products or services.

The settling defendants, Direct Connection Consulting, Inc. and Digicom, LLC, are subject to a monetary judgment of $15,707,917.86 and to a $5 million performance bond, which the defendands will need to obtain if they ever get envolved in telemarketing again. The bond will act as an insurance agreement whose funds can be used to provide redress to any consumers harmed by the defendants' telemarketing activities.

As soon as you picked up the phone and said your name you were most likely going to get "hit" as the person who "authorized" the shipments. Just imagine if your boss answered the phone that day?

The "scam" of this company is not that they don't provide what they say, but how they do it. You have rights and probably should not have paid the invoice. A link to a very good article by the Federal Trade Commission is below that goes over this as well as your rights.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/fraud/bus24.shtm

A simple call to these people with threats of a lawsuit and calls to the FTC would probably have gotten them off of your back in about 30 seconds.