Just moments before I was set to write about the latest rip-off – full page ad in today’s Hartford Courant about the Rare sheets of $2 bills that have “sold at prestigious action houses for thousands of dollars,” I received an email from a Middletown reader about the ad.
The reader, James McAuliffe, said he called the telephone in the ad quickly confirmed his suspicion that it was a ripoff designed to benefit only the “World Reserve Monetary Exchange,” which has many other inflated priced items, and the newspapers that carry these highly profitable ads.
$2 bills ad from eBay
“My operator, Crystal, started asking me my name state and zip code to ensure that I “qualified” (what a joke!). Then she asked my address. At this time I stopped providing information an asked her how many $2 bill I would get for $48. The answer is 4. So, $48 gets you $8. Pretty good return for this scam,” he wrote me.
Actually its more than that, you also have to pay $14.88 for shipping.
As far as rarity and the limited places that the offer is made to, here are the facts:
Go to eBay and see how many other people are selling or attempting to sell these un-circulated sheets of $2 bills. You will see offers for $20 for the same sheets with NO takers. So much for the thousands of dollars that they fetch at auction houses.
As far as limiting who can buy they, Amber, the operator who handled my call said they are sold in every state except for one – Massachusetts which forbids it.
“I think it is immoral of the Courant to accept ad money for these transparent scams,” he wrote me.
For other rip-off Courant (unfortunately some other newspapers also run these) ads checks these:
[ad#uconn468]
In a related scam, somebody called my house trying to sell me a newspaper called the Hartford Courant. But what came in the mail was not a newspaper at all–just a lousy rag with a bunch of rip off ads. I think I’ll call Consumer Protection.
Connecticut’s self-styled “Watchdog,” George Gombossy, has his own question to answer today.
This past weekend Mr. Gombossy’s continued his ongoing crusade against the Hartford Courant – a newspaper with which he clearly has an issue – by attacking the newspaper for publishing an ad he calls a “rip off” involving the sale of $2 bills.
But what Mr. Gombossy doesn’t tell his readers is this ad has also run in numerous other Connecticut publications, including the New Haven Register, which just so happens to publish Mr. Gombossy’s CT Watchdog column every week.
So it’s bad for the Courant to run this ad, but when a different newspaper that has Mr. Gombossy on its payroll runs it as well, that’s OK?
I’ll make it very simple and ask Mr. Gombossy what a longtime reporter like himself should appreciate – a straightforward question: Why did you go after the Courant for running this ad, yet didn’t go after the New Haven Register for doing the same thing?
Thank you. Your readers deserve an explanation.
It’s so obvious that the ad is a scam – the pictures are Photoshopped to look real – see how the money is on the push cart – and – you think there is that much “security” guarding sheets moving “inside” a secure facility – right –
it’s probably the same company as those Amish built heaters –
why can’t the FTC crack down on this?
Disappointed former…..boy oh boy did you hit the nail on the head. This blog has become a one man tirade against a paper that fired him. It’s called “at will employment”….deal with it.
And still waiting on that answer from our “watchdog”