James_H
And I like to roam the land
- Joined
- May 18, 2002
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as reported in the london TIMES
August 17, 2002
Undetected urban legend spread by police force
By David Rowan
POOR Paul Toseland – one minute he was just another Northamptonshire community police officer, the next, he was a notorious peddler of junk e-mail.
All PC Toseland wanted to do was warn local businesses of a new telephone scam that could potentially cost them “a lot of money”.
So in his capacity as Corby Business Anti-Crime Network Administrator, PC Toseland thoughtfully sent a few contacts an e-mail, and unwittingly propagated the summer’s wildest urban legend.
Indispensable as e-mail has become in our daily communications, it has also proved the most effective medium for modern myths.
For PC Toseland, the trouble began with the request that anyone reading his warning, about a woman pretending to be in distress so that she could call her own premium-rate phone line, should “please pass it on to friends and colleagues”.
By this weekend, the e-mail had been received by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people across Britain, to the growing embarrassment of Northamptonshire Police. For despite PC Toseland’s claim that the scam in question had been reported “five times in the last couple of weeks”, his superiors this week had to accept the uncomfortable truth.
They said: “Information which is being circulated electronically to businesses by the force is not correct.”
The e-mail, headed “Message from Northamptonshire Police”, gives a warning of a woman who has been calling on homes claiming that her car has broken down and asking to call her husband. Her fictitious five-minute conversation costs the bill-payer £250.
The warning is spoilt by only one detail: according to ICSTIS, the body that regulates premium-rate phone lines, the highest tariff charged in Britain is £1.50 a minute, rather than £50.
The regulator told local trading standards officers that no one had been able to produce a phone bill to support the story. But the damage was done.
Rob Dwight, media officer for the regulator, said: “For the best part of three months, we’ve been getting dozens of calls a day about it. It’s just not true. You simply can’t set that tariff in this country.”
Students of urban legends would have seen the warning signs: the lack of detail about the victims, little description for the woman, the combination of breathless anecdote and official police report.
Since e-mail replaced the chain letter as the preferred means of spreading popular myth, it has spread everything from false virus alerts to dubious promises of Nigerian riches. But when Northamptonshire Police began receiving inquiries on June 17, the force initially issued a statement insisting “to the best of our knowledge it is not an urban legend as some people have been suggesting”.
Last week it had to accept the inevitable. A spokeswoman admitted that it was not true. “We do want this to go to bed now. Unfortunately the e-mail was sent out in good faith and the facts weren’t checked out at the start.”
PC Toseland was unavailable for comment.
At least he was not first to tell the story: The Times has traced the myth back to early May, when it began circulating among local Neighbourhood Watch groups.
The National Neighbourhood Watch Association, to its credit, decided not to forward the warning. Martin Burrekoven-Kalve, the association’s communications director, said: “You feel it in your waters that something’s not right, and this seemed a bit far-fetched. It doesn’t take an awful lot of research to find out it’s not true.”
But in Northamptonshire, the local Chamber of Commerce did pass on the warning in its e-mail bulletin, in part encouraged by an employee’s belief that she had almost fallen victim herself.
The woman had apparently become suspicious after receiving a knock on her door at home to find a stranger asking to make an emergency call on a mobile phone. The householder refused, although when The Times attempted to contact the intended victim, she proved unavailable.
So did the Chamber of Commerce now believe that the scam PC Toseland had described was genuine? “It’s difficult, isn’t it?” a spokeswoman replied after a pause. “I just don’t know.”
Ingenious scam that never was
Message from Northamptonshire Police: below are details of a scam currently going the rounds. The police have requested that as many people are alerted as possible. Unfortunately it is a genuine scam.
Police Report: the reason this is working so well is it plays on your goodwill! Picture the scene. You are sitting at home and there is a knock at the door. On answering it, you are confronted by a respectable looking woman in a suit, who is slightly distressed. She explains that her car has broken down further down the road and she needs to contact her husband to come to her aid. Is it possible to use your phone to call him? You allow her to use the phone, but being the suspicious type you stand with her as she makes the call. She dials the number, and asks to be put through to Mr Smith/Brown/Stevens (whatever). She holds the line for about 30 seconds. She continues, “In that case can you ask him to leave the meeting for a minute, I need to speak to him quite urgently.”
She apologises again and explains they are getting him out of a meeting.
A couple of minutes go by and she starts to speak to her husband. She explains the situation to him, tells him what has happened to the car, is annoyed because she now cannot get to her meeting, and asks what she should do now. She listens for a few seconds and then says, “Well as soon as the meeting finishes, can you come to Cardiff Road/Leicester Road/Surrey Street (whatever), where the car has broken down.”
Another few seconds go by. “OK, I’ll see you in about 20 minutes then.”
She put the phone down, and thanks you ever so much for your kind assistance, even offering you a pound for your trouble, but of course you decline, it is no trouble.
She leaves and everything is fine. Or is it? The day or week before knocking on your door, she set up her own premium-rate line with a telephone company at the cost of about £150, and she has dictated that calls to that number should be charged at £50 per minute. She has dialled that number. The conversation she has had with her “husband” is entirely fictitious; there is a pre-recorded voice message on the other end to give you the impression she is talking to someone. She has been on the phone for about five minutes; that call just cost you £250, the majority of which goes into her pocket, and the first you know about it is when you get your bill a month later.
To rub a bit of salt into the wound, she has not even committed a criminal offence. You have given her permission to use your phone. In Luton this has been reported five times in the last couple of weeks.
Would anyone reading this please pass it on to friends and colleagues et cetera? Otherwise it could cost someone a lot of money.
PC Paul Toseland, Corby Business Anti-Crime Network Administrator