Chesterton Police are investigating a scam perpetrated against Biggby Coffee, 3091 Village Point, by an unknown person identifying himself as an Internal Revenue Service agent.
At 7 p.m. Monday, July 1, a Biggby employee took a call on the store phone from a “Jamie King,” speaking in what the employee described as a “Southern American accent” and purporting to be an IRS agent, according to a release on the police department’s Facebook page.
The caller advised the employee that in advance of an “audit” — prompted supposedly by the store’s having “accepted and deposited counterfeit bills” — she needed to count the number of U.S. currency denominations in each of the registers, police said.
She was also instructed “not to contact any Biggby management, citing a confidentiality requirement,” according to police.
The employee did as she was told, then on further instructions put all the paper money in a bag — “no change per ‘Jamie’s request’” — and took the cash to two different “approved stores” where Green Dot Money Pack cards are sold, the Walgreens and the Dollar Tree in Chesterton.
There she purchased a total of three cards, having previously divided the money into three equal sums, police said.
The employee was next instructed to put the cards and receipts in an envelope addressed to the Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service in Austin, Texas, and drop the envelope in the drive-through mailbox at the Chesterton Post Office, police said.
Finally, “Jamie” told the employee that she would receive a call from her manager’s cell phone, and she did receive such a call but believes that his cell number had been spoofed, police said.
Although the investigating officer attempted unsuccessfully to access the mailbox — “due to the time of night” he was unable to make contact with the US Postal Service — he subsequently learned that the employee had scratched off the protective covering of all three cards and provided “Jamie” with the numbers, “not realizing that would complete the fraud and open the funds to the receiver,” police said.
Chesterton Police did not disclose the amount of money lost in the scam. The case has been forwarded to the department’s Investigations Division.