Springfield News Sun
DeWine sounds warning on consumer scams
By Tom Stafford 

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine warned members of the Springfield Rotary Club Monday to be wary of scam artists looking to make easy money. 

“We’ve always had scam artists,” DeWine said during his visit to the Hollenbeck-Bayley Conference Center. But the Internet now provides them with “a long arm” that allows them to “reach out across many states” to prey on their victims. 

Retired teacher Bob Weidner told the audience he didn’t wire money to his grandson in Texas as the result of a phone call made to him six weeks before. 

But the guest of Rotarian John Recknagel testified about the skill of people perpetrating the scam DeWine had described moments before. 

The caller “sounded exactly like my grandson,” the 80-year-old Weidner said. 

Only a cell phone call to his wife confirmed the grandson was not talking to him, said Weidner, because he was, at that moment, talking to his grandmother. 

DeWine, who started his political career as Greene County Prosecutor and has since been a state senator, Congressman, lieutenant governor and U.S. Senator, talked like a man retired Congressman and fellow Republican Dave Hobson said was “doing a job I think he was born to do.” 

DeWine returned an off-handed compliment to Hobson by saying he was unlikely to have been drawn into a couple in Coshocton’s scam of selling fake Lady Gaga tickets online, jesting that, on the other hand, Republican State Rep. Bob Hackett “might go to a Lady Gaga concert.” 

DeWine said charity scams also proliferate, including one his office investigated that led to an arrest in California of “a guy who was so good he had his picture taken with George Bush.” 

At the time of his arrest for defrauding people of money he said was for veterans, DeWine said, the scammer who had worked in 45 states had one suitcase with $1 million in cash, a second with 20 disguises and a collection of 15 false IDs... 

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