News February 19, 2025
Scammer Tries To Swindle Distributor Out of 12,000 Tumblers
The distributorship spotted the scam and is now warning other firms to be leery.
Key Takeaways
• Bogus Order: A con artist posed as an Ohio University employee and tried to scam a promo distributorship.
• Red Flags Uncovered: The distributorship detected the scam and avoided financial loss.
• Ongoing Crookery: This type of scam has become increasingly common.
A con artist posing as an actual employee for Ohio University attempted to rip off a promotional products distributorship in the Buckeye State, but the promo pros were savvy to the swindle and didn’t lose a dime.
Still, the distributorship, which requested anonymity, wanted to warn other branded merch professionals that crooks continue to advance this now common scam within the swag industry.
As was shared with ASI Media, the criminal contacted the distributorship through a website order submission form, using the name of Michael Tedesco, a real information technology employee at Ohio University. The spoofer was requesting a quote for 12,000 insulated water bottles that, it was said, were to be used for fundraising purposes.
The request was replete with red flags. The email address was doctored to look similar to a real Ohio University email, but was still different, being tmichael@ohio-education.org. The large quantity of product requested, seemingly out of the blue, from a major university was another suspicious sign. So was the request for net 30 payment terms.
Some further sleuthing by the distributor confirmed the “order” was bogus. “We have protocols in place to prevent a fraudulent order getting by,” a representative of the company told ASI Media. Had the distributor sourced and fulfilled the order, the criminals would have made off with the product, never paying for it and leaving the distributor on the hook for what would have been a sizable bill. Distributors that have encountered the scam believe the stolen goods are sold on the illicit market.
The scheme follows a formula that scammers have been working for years. They contact distributors through email/website order submission forms and pose as actual buyers for universities, businesses, nonprofits, household-name brands and other organizations.
Crooks have posed as Tedesco in the past. One time, a con artist spoofing as Tedesco was brazen enough to get on a phone call with the promo distributor he was trying to scheme out of more than $60,000 worth of reusable water bottles.
The would-be swindlers appear to have even more frequently spoofed the name of Michael Pidcock, another Ohio University employee, in digital rip-off approaches to distributors. Pidcock, Tedesco and Ohio University have nothing to do with the scams; they’re identity theft victims, essentially.