Continuing Fraud Travelers Express Inc. of Minneapolis
Subj: Continuing Fraud
Date: 10/7/99 2:42:07 PM US Mountain Standard Time
I have encountered directly a nationwide scandal involving
Travelers Express Inc. of Minneapolis. They are the nation's
largest seller of money orders and they have worked out at least
one curious scheme for ripping-off their customers for up to $500
each occasion. This one happens when you need to place a stop pay
on a lost or stolen m/o.
The company will instruct you to rush request w/ additional fee.
They will next tell you that in your case they did not initiate a
stop-pay.(They are Lying to you about that, They did immediately
order a stop).
Next they will tell you that someone has cashed your money order and
that they have payed it. (FACT: SOMEONE HAS ATTEMPTED TO CASH YOUR
MONEY ORDER BUT THE FOLKS AT TRAVELERS EXPRESS HAVE DEFERENTT PLANS
FOR WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR MONEY AND THEY WON'T BE PAYING IT TO ANY
OTHER THIEVES).
This company will next provide you with a "Photocopy" of the m/o.
They will try to make you believe that this is the way this giant
cor-poration keeps records of money that they pay out. The
photocopy will of course prove untraceable (since no one has been
payed anything)and your police detective will find the money order
to be useless.
The detective should recognize the scheme at that point but, for
some reason, they don't.
The folks at Travelers Express will attempt to convince you that
you have been riped off by some clever thief who managed to leave no
traceable evidence. They want you to believe that they never heard
of computerized records or of electronic transfer of funds, just
poor quality "Photocopies".
Whether you buy any of this or not, the nice folks at Travelers
Express will, at this point, put your money in their own pockets.
The money orders are sold in amounts up to $500 and they recently
got me for almost that amount.
I understand that many, many hundreds of complaints similar to my
own have been filed with the Better Business Bureau and The Federal
Trade Commission. These agencies, for their own reasons, will
pretend ignorance of any problem and will do nothing, treating each
complaintas though it was the very first.
This company gambles that each of their victims will, at some point,
give up in frustration. That will prove a mistake in my case.
Dave Goggin
davegoggin@hotmail.com
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