OGDEN -- Flower shops around Utah are being targeted by a scam in which a supposedly deaf person on the telephone orders a large amount of flowers, then asks the florist to charge additional money on the credit card and immediately refund it in cash or wire.
Annie Whittaker, secretary of the Utah Professional Florist Association, said shops all over Utah, including hers, Annie's Main Street Floral in Layton, have been getting the calls.
"So many of us have received these calls and they come in groups, swarms," she said. "Someone is using the deaf relay system," a system in which a deaf person types a message into a communications box on their telephone and a hearing operator relays the message.
"You have an operator who is actually calling," Whittaker said, "and you have someone who says 'I need some flower arrangements for my brother's wedding,' " typically several arrangements at $200 each.
"When they first started doing this, they didn't even give a price, just wanted big," she said, and she agreed to try to help.
"But at the end, they said, 'I'd like to give them a gift of $1,300, so could you charge that much more on the card?' " and then asked to have that extra money returned through some sort of wire transfer.
Jennifer Bolton, spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Commerce office of consumer affairs, said Wednesday her office hasn't heard of the florist scam, but that it is a variation on one that got its start several years ago with online auctions and has since targeted a wide number of businesses.
In the original version, a person would win the auction, send a large amount of money over the agreed price, then request the change wired back quickly, claiming some sort of emergency.
In all cases, the original payment, either by check or money order, turned out to be worthless while the person who sent the money back would lose that money.
Whittaker said she doesn't know of any Utah florists who have been taken, but several have tried to figure out who the scammer is.
"You leave a message and they never call back," she said. "And the last time they called here, I had them on the phone, I said (to the relay operator), 'Tell them I'm calling the police,' and the operator repeated a vulgar message."
Chantelle Mathews, owner of Galleria Floral and Design in Park City, said she gets two or three calls a week related to the same scam.
She said the danger for a florist is not just the money charged above the cost of the order, but the loss if they actually prepare the flowers for the order, typically eight arrangements at $200 each.
"I'll tell them I'll give (the extra money) to them in person and try to trap them," she said, but they usually hang up at that point.
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