Be Aware: Overpayment Scam Targeting Small-Market Stations

A radio station owner in California is warning broadcasters after he says his station was targeted by an overpayment scam. He says someone tried to con the station out of tens of thousands of dollars – and he’s not alone.

Carl Goldman owns KHTS in Santa Clarita, CA. He says they were contacted by a man from an Ottawa-based research consultancy. The sales agent approached KHTS with a proposal for a one-month advertising schedule for August for a medical supply company based in Vancouver, Canada. A professional commercial and a month-long schedule, costing $4,800, were promptly provided.

When asked about payment, Goldman says the agent insisted that payment for the service be wired directly into the radio station’s checking account. A week later, KHTS received another email stating the client accidentally wired $40,800, instead of $4,800. KHTS was asked to refund the difference of $36,000.

The radio station indeed found an additional $40,800 deposited in their account, but upon scrutiny, KHTS discovered irregularities in the payment process, which raised suspicions. The funds were not wired as initially claimed, but came as a check from a US Bank in Washington State. KHTS suspected that whoever was behind the deposit intended to stop payment on the check after receiving the overpaid amount, thereby executing a classic check overpayment scam.

KHTS then reached out to the Canadian medical supply company the consultancy claimed to represent, only to find they were a legitimate company with no affiliation to the agent.

After hearing Goldman’s story, Radio Ink decided to investigate the sales agent and the consultancy further.

Searching for the agent on Google or LinkedIn produced no results, unusual for anyone in international sales. Radio Ink visited the consultancy’s website, and using a reverse image search on several staff page photo, we were led to the images on various stock photo sites.

The site’s registrar info was protected via a proxy service from the company the domain was purchased through, NameCheap, but an address was given in Reykjavik, Iceland. Radio Ink Googled the address, finding further claims of various scams stemming from that location that could be related.

Finally, when we called the number listed on the website, there was only a robotic answering message that did not mention the consultancy at all. Our call was not returned.

Since posting about his experience on the KHTS website, numerous smaller-market stations from across the country have contacted Goldman. Each one has had similar suspect dealings with the same company, including one that has lost money from the overpayment.

Radio Ink corroborated the story with one of those stations, obtained emails featuring requests for ACH information and tenuous grammar, similar to what Goldman described to us.