Looking for interesting mayors (ideas, anybody?), I wound up on a website that mentioned the Village of Bel-Nor. An ad caught my eye, a picture of President Obama with siren-song copy about free government money. "Scam!" I thought, pouncing like a kitten on yarn. Furious that they were using the president's photo--isn't that a bit like draping a flag over Bernie Madoff?--I clicked through to tomscash.com. There, a friendly young fireman named Tom Donahue--from St. Louis, Mo., yet--was offering to show me how to get $12,760 free from the government in 30 days. I hesitated, not wanting even to click, terrified that somehow I'd be branded and my firstborn sold if I so much as pressed the mouse.
But Eve plucked that apple for a reason. And so, I clicked, right through to the Grant Funding Express, where I was offered free grant software and treated to mainstream media logos and headlines about the government dividing up $4 billion in community block grants. How that was going to get me the $50,000 mentioned at the top of the page, I had no idea. But then, a friend has just asked me if the economic stimulus package was going to ease the strain of my husband's layoff from a historic site. "Um...not unless he learns to build roads," I answered, wondering if I'd missed something. As a country, we remain deeply, strangely, falsely, optimistic.
Hence this website. I zapped the link to my friend Dan Taylor, a postal inspector who hounds scammers, and he wrote back to ask me where St. Louis was mentioned. "Proud firefighter and family man, born and raised in Saint Louis, Mo.," I cut-and-pasted, then added the byline as a final flourish: "Tom Donahue--Saint Louis, Mo." Granted, nobody spells out Saint except nonprofits. But jeez, Taylor was usually sharper than this. St. Louis was mentioned three times in the post!
"That is funny," he replied. "When I follow the link it says Raleigh, NC." We talked a while, me still sputtering with civilian outrage. He told me his agency's primed for an influx of scams using the economic stimulus package even more explicitly than this site does. "We had a similar one, people had to pay to get the grant, and the check went to a Mailboxes Etc. We did a civil order and just shut it down."
The next morning he emailed again: "Today it says Michigan City, IN."
Still Tom the friendly firefighter? Still the cute picture taking his wife out to dinner on a government-funded New York vacation?
Same Tom. Same cute wife.
I'm just glad we can't claim him.
--Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
