Engraved Custom Gifts

PART 1: June 3,2011

In the middle of the pile of sympathy cards and bills we received today was a letter from a company called EngravedCustomGifts.com in Katy, Texas. The letter was dated May 31,2011 and addressed to my husband Craig, who died on Tuesday, May 24,2011.

The letter tells my husband that his Engraved Crystal Paperweight order is complete and ready to be shipped. The letter instructs him to go online to their website to review the order and make a final payment for it.

The letter immediately aroused my suspicions. During the last month of his life, Craig was in and out of the hospital and on some serious pain medications. I was with him nearly 24/7. I never saw him order anything online or over the phone, and he never spoke to me about such an order. However, Craig did enjoy ordering special things from catalogs, often without telling me, so I decided to log on to the website and see what he had supposedly ordered.

On the website were four crystal paperweights, one for each of our children. Each paperweight began with one of the kid's names, and then contained a trite saying about life and death. Each was signed, "Love DAD."

Anyone who knew my husband or knows my family knows that my children have always called Craig "Papa" rather than Dad. Always. I knew then and there that Craig had not ordered these engraved "customized" paperweights. First off, he never would have selected such trite and God-less sayings as a final message to his children. And NEVER would he have ordered that a "customized" item be signed "DAD."

So, it is obvious to me that the people at EngravedCustomGifts.com in Katy, Texas pay someone to search obituaries and other online sources for the names and addresses of people who have died, and then send out these bogus letters a week after the person's death to make their loved ones believe that the deceased person actually ordered these things. Of course many people will fall for this and pay the fee, thinking that their dead father, mother or grandparent wanted them to have that "special" paperweight.

In addition to sending the company a complaint via the "contact us" form on their website, I also contacted the Minnesota Attorney General's office to alert them to this scam and ask them to investigate.

I also contacted the American Cancer Society, since the ECG website featured their logo with a statement that a portion of every order placed would be donated by ECG to the American Cancer Society. I thought they would want to know that a fraudulent website was using the name, logo and reputation of the ACS to make their scam look more legitimate. I also encouraged the ACS to use their power and presence in the public square to educate people about scams directed toward grieving families. A representative from the American Cancer Society responded to me right away, and told me someone on their staff would look into it.

Lastly, I contacted PayPal, because the ECG website purports to use PayPal to collect payments for the orders. (When you click on the "pay now" link on the ECG website, you are connected to what looks like a PayPal log-in page. I suspect it's not an actual PayPal page, but that ECG uses it to collect people's PayPal usernames and passwords, and then uses that information to steal their funds or commit other acts of identity theft.) Thus far, all I have received from PayPay are automated email responses that demonstrate that no one at PayPal ever actually reads the emails people send them. (Or perhaps PayPal is really a gigantic conglomeration of computers, without a real person behind it at all. Be honest. We all kind of suspected that anyway, didn't we?)

PART 2: June 28,2011

Last week I received a letter from Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson. She expressed her condolences and wrote, "It is unconscionable that a company would try to take advantage of your family at this difficult time in your lives." The letter goes on to say that she has written to EngravedCustomGifts.com, asking for a written response within 10 days, including a copy of the order form that was supposedly submitted. I doubt she'll get a response.

Swanson's letter also states that members of her staff have viewed the EngravedCustomGifts.com website and concluded it has the appearance of a bogus company, without a street address or telephone number listed. Further research by Swanson's staff did not turn up this information. Quoting directly from Swanson's letter:

"Websites like these are easily created and offer an opportunity for scam artists to act as a legitimate company to obtain payments for orders that are never sent or, in your case, try to collect on invoices for orders that were never placed... Some unscrupulous scam artists may use readily available information sources such as newspaper obituaries to play on the emotional upheaval caused by the death of a loved one. Obituaries contain significant personal information about a family including the names of close family members. If your case, it appears that the scam artist may have used this information in hopes of getting payment of a fraudulent invoice in hopes of a sentimental reminder of your loved one."

Swanson has assigned this case to one of the assistant attorneys general in her office for further investigation.

I'm glad to have "official" confirmation of my suspicions about this company, although I don't know if even the Minnesota Attorney General will be able to stop them. They'll probably pull down the old site once they know someone's on their trail, and put up a new website under some other bogus name. I think the best way to stop people like this is to let friends and family members know that such scams exist and warn them to be cautious. And that's why I'm writing today.

PART 3: July 15,2011
Yesterday, I received from the Minnesota Attorney General's Office copies of correspondence between them and ECG. As you recall, the Minnesota AG sent a letter to ECG, asking that they provide a copy of the original order they received from Craig. To be honest, I didn't think ECG would respond at all, but they did.

In their letter, they claim that I contacted them and "demanded that we reveal to her, personal and financial information about someone whom she claimed was one of her dead relatives. We explained to her that we abide by a privacy policy that prevents us from disseminating personal or private information about anyone, living or dead, without written permission. She insisted that, in her particular case, we should violate our privacy policy. We refused to do so."

Where do I begin to respond to these lies?

1. While I did contact them with an email via their website (letting them know I was on to them, telling them I thought they were despicable for preying on grieving families, and encouraging them to get right with God before they stand before Him on Judgment Day), I never asked them to reveal Craig's personal and financial information. I am his widow! I already have that information, thank you very much! (Oh, and thanks, ECG, for implying that I was lying about being related to my own dead husband!)

2. No one at ECG has ever directly contacted me about this situation to explain their privacy policy to me. I never insisted that they violate their so-called privacy policy, because I have not been in direct contact with them, other than the initial complaint email.

The Minnesota AG's Office responded to ECG's letter with a second letter that reiterates that the deceased relative in question is indeed my late husband, and that the Minnesota AG believes it reasonable that ECG provide a copy of the order form Craig allegedly submitted. They are giving ECG another 10 days to send a written response. Can't wait to read the new lies they'll come up with for that letter!

All along, I have been sharing the details of this situation with Jane Friedmann, a journalist on the Whistleblower staff at the Star Tribune, our local newspaper. Jane told me today that she would be treating this story as an "ongoing saga," the first installment of which will appear in this Sunday's paper. When I talked to Jane this afternoon, she also told me that the American Cancer Society logo is now gone from the ECG website. I'm guessing someone at the ACS sent them a strongly worded "cease and desist" letter.

PART 4: July 29,2011
A small article about my experiences with the scammers at EngravedCustomGifts.com (ECG) ran in the StarTribune newspaper on Sunday, July 16. (You can read the article here: http://www.startribune.com/local/*******.html. The article contains two separate stories, so you'll need to scroll down to the subhead that reads "Targeted Widow Fighting Back" to read my story.)

After that article ran, its author (Jane Friedmann at the StarTribune) received an email on July 20 from a gentleman in eastern Pennsylvania whose father-in-law had recently passed away after a long struggle with cancer. In his email, he wrote, "A few days ago my mother-in-law received a letter from a website called 'engravedcustomgifts' claiming that my father-in-law started a order for two crystal paperweights, one for each of his children, and that he needs to pay to have them shipped. Immediately, I became a little skeptical and when I tried to find contact information, there was nothing on the website nor the letter. So, I decided to search this website, and I happened to stumble on an article that you wrote about a Nina Wallestad... Her account is identical to our situation." So, we now have evidence that the folks at ECG have attempted to perpetuate this fraud on others.

And now for today's news:

As I have done weekly since this saga began, today I entered engravedcustomgifts.com in my web browser, just to check on the website and see if anything has changed. It no longer exists! Instead, there's a generic "Sorry, the page you're looking for can't be found" message from Homestead.com, a website hosting company. I'm guessing this means that the folks behind EngravedCustomGifts.com have stopped the scam – at least under that name. I wouldn't doubt that they'll create some other website under some other name and continue the scamming, but at least we threw up a few road blocks in their path!

Based on the info a friend gathered for me about the ECG website a few months ago, I think they may just be in the process of changing web hosting companies from GoDaddy.com to Homestead.com. I'm going to try to contact someone at Homestead to alert them to this scam.

I'm feeling pretty great right now, knowing that I've made life difficult for the scammers behind ECG. But let's all continue to be vigilant and to warn grieving families about scams like this.