Neighborhood Watch
Be Careful of Solicitors Asking for Your Money
This was reported by a concerned neighbor who lives in our Association boundaries. Please keep on the lookout for this and other potential frauds and be sure to report them to the police so others don't fall prey to similar schemes.
Report:
We had a young white male (claiming to be 19) come to our house yesterday to "raise" money to send himself to Lahaina, Maui as he was a member of the "Roseville Bandits" baseball team. He said that we could purchase books to help a child at St. Jude’s Hospital, tax write off, etc. He said that in return, he "felt guilty for asking neighbors for money, but that his dad owned a Mr. Squeegee business and he volunteered to wash all our windows." To that end, we turned him down on washing our windows because we just wanted to help a St. Jude’s child with no strings attached. Yes, we were suckers! We gave him a check for $96.00 (the lowest amount possible). Of course, once we shut the door, my husband "googled" the "QSI" (since that’s who we needed to make the check out to). Of course, fraud alert. The stories online were his sales speech, verbatim. We also searched for Roseville Bandits and placed a phone call to one of the contacts on that site and asked him a few questions about…nineteen year olds getting a trip to Maui, an older Bandits league, etc. and he said he had no knowledge of it.
By the way, this kid said his name was Seth Tucker and that he earned a baseball scholarship to San Diego State in the fall (to play for Tony Gwinn). Seriously, this kid threw in a ton of details. He said he lived on Millport.
My husband drove the neighborhood in search of him while I called the Roseville Police. In addition, we contacted our bank and stopped payment on the check. This morning, we contacted the fraud department at our bank to inquire about any other steps to take – which they recommended shutting our account down and opening up a new account (since this boy had our check and account number) because of identity theft.
I just wanted to get the word out. In hindsight, there were so many red flags. Unfortunately, we just wanted to see the good intention of a young boy. Instead, we are now jaded and will likely never support anybody we don’t know that comes to our door.
