While the nation’s unemployment rate might not be dropping dramatically, one group that seems to have plenty of “work” are scam-artists. And shop owners who have fallen victim – or avoided a close-call with a scam – are telling their stories to help keep others from getting burned.

A shop in Portland, Ore., for example, recently accepted not one but two phony money orders, resulting in a loss of nearly $2,000.

Ron Tanner, owner of Tanner’s Automotive, said the two men he believes were behind the fraud have been arrested, though the shop is not likely to receive any restitution.

“But if I can keep one other person, one other colleague, from getting burned, then that’s my objective,” Tanner said.

The incident began when a customer had a vehicle towed to one of Tanner’s two automotive repair shops. The service writer and manager of the shop accepted a $700 money order for the work on the vehicle.

“My employee was under the impression, as I was, that all money orders have to be good because you have to pay cash for them,” Tanner said.

Three or four days later, the same customer brought in another vehicle, a pick-up, for repair, this time paying with a $1,271 money order. Several days after both vehicles had been returned to the customer, Tanner’s bank returned the money orders as invalid. By calling the phone number for the business where the money orders were supposedly issued, Tanner learned they were counterfeit.

Tanner said the fraud could have been avoided if the shop had done a better job of verifying the identification of the customer and matching it to the money order and vehicle registration. Between the fake names, addresses, signatures and phone numbers given by the customer and on the money order, something should have raised a red flag, he said.

“I definitely have new policies now,” he said.

He said his managers now know that any type of check or money order needs to be validated before a vehicle is released. If something doesn’t seem right, he said, shops should ask the customer for cash, driving the customer to the bank, if necessary.

Another Oregon shop owner has become very knowledgeable about a new twist on a scam often called the “Nigerian money transfer scheme.” Bob Trout, the owner of Pilot Butte Auto Repair in Bend, Ore., had decided he had one too many project vehicles and decided to sell a 1967 Chevelle. He placed an ad on a Chevelle website, and about four weeks later received an email from someone claiming to be a broker with an interested buyer.

“According to the email, the way the transaction would work is the buyer would send me a cashier’s check for $9,800,” Trout said. “The price of the car was $3,500. After I deposited the cashier’s check, I was to take my $3,500, and then Western Union him the balance, and they would arrange for shipping once I gave consent for the car to be picked up.”

The odd arrangement raised a number of red flags for Trout.

“First, a broker generally stays in the middle and doesn’t put you or the buyer in direct contact with one another,” Trout said. “The buyer would write the broker a check, and he’d write me a check and stay in the middle of the transaction. I started to wonder: Why is this broker putting me in direct contact with the buyer?”

Trout also thought it was odd that a buyer supposedly in the United Kingdom would pay $9,800 to have a vehicle that doesn’t even run shipped overseas.

“Once they got it over there, where are they going to get parts to fix it?” Trout said.

He was having lunch with his banker that day, and decided to tell her about the proposed transaction.

“She about fell out of her chair,” Trout said. “She actually had a news article about this same scam with someone with a Cadillac who unfortunately followed through with the transaction, wired off the money, and two weeks later got a call from the bank saying that the cashier’s check he’d deposited was a fraud and no good.”

Though he’d already decided not to follow through with the scheme, Trout played along with the “broker,” and sure enough, received a cashier’s check via Federal Express. He showed it to his banker who took a photocopy of it and said that alone convinced her it was likely a fake.

“She said that when you photocopy 99.9 percent of cashier’s checks, the word ‘void’ appears on the copy,” Trout said. “This one didn’t do that.”

Trout did call the Florida credit union on which the check was drawn, and was told they receive an average of five to 10 similar calls a day about such scams.

Given the relatively small dollar amount involved and the fact that the perpetrators are generally located outside the country, most law enforcement officials don’t pursue such scammers, Trout said he’s been told.

“But I just might frame this check, because really who scammed who here?” Trout says. “It cost him more to FedEx this check than I have into this.”

Trout subsequently received an email that helped him understand how this “Nigerian money transfer scheme” got its name. The scammer sends an email – or in years past, an airmail letter – from Nigeria or other country asking the potential victim to accept a cashier’s check and wire back a smaller amount. The reasons given for the transaction vary, but the growth of online vehicle sales has given scammers a new use for the scheme.

John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988. He can be contacted at (503) 335-0393 or by email at jyoswick@teleport.com.