uScammer Dad Uses Daughter To Sell Nonexistent Girl Scout Cookies Door-To-Doorr

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  Our forensic artist’s recreation of the crime.

  It’s a pretty common sight every year to see parents escorting their Girl Scout daughters around the neighborhood, ringing doorbells and trying to move as many Samoas and Tagalongs as possible. So the residents of one Pennsylvania town didn’t think twice when a man who grew up in the area came around with his youngster to sell Girl Scout cookies — that is, until those treats never materialized.

  KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh reports that a 33-year-old father has been arrested after making the rounds with his daughter, taking cash for cookie orders that he had no intention of fulfilling.

  One Washington Township woman says her husband bought two boxes of Tagalongs from the alleged scammer. The total was $8; her husband gave the man $10 and told him to keep the change. In keeping with the flim-flam spirit, the man said he’d donate that extra money to disable veterans.

  The scammer not only used his daughter to give his ruse the necessary veneer of authenticity, he also preyed upon people who knew him as a familiar face around town.

  “[W]e trusted him,” says the victim. “He went to school with some of the kids in the area. They are all grown up now. To think that this kind of thing is going on in your neighborhood is not good. He was nice back in the day.”

  Police received reports from eight victims who were taken for anywhere from $4 to $44, but KDKA reports that there were other families taken in by this con who didn’t notify authorities.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uOregon Drivers May Soon Be Able To Pump Their Own Gas In Remote Areasr

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  (u2acro)

  If you meet someone who doesn’t know how to pump gas, it’s likely due to one of two things: Either they’ve never driven a car/don’t have a license because they live in a city where it’s unnecessary, or they’re from either Oregon or New Jersey, where it’s illegal to pump your own gas. That could be changing for Oregonians soon, at least to a certain extent.

  The State Legislature could be about to allow motorists to use self-serve gas pumps at least in rural areas where there aren’t a lot of gas stations open late, reports the Associated Press.

  Those remote parts of Oregon can be a surprise to people who aren’t familiar with them and who know that gas stations are often separated by hundreds of miles, said Rep. Cliff Bentz, sponsor of a bill that would let gas stations offer self-service fuel when there isn’t an owner, operator or employee around.

  The measure would only apply to counties where there are fewer than 40,000 residents, which comes down to about half of the state’s counties.

  “You go around eastern Oregon counties, you find more and more situations where there isn’t any fuel. And it’s not unlike the situation electric car owners find themselves in now,” said Bentz.

  The bill was approved by the House unanimously and is now awaiting a committee hearing in the Senate.

  Oregon may end self-serve gas ban — only in rural areas [Associated Press]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uIKEA Helps Out Senior Center After Robbers Steal All The Furniturer

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• In February, residents of a recently opened senior center in Cincinnati found that their home hadn’t just been burgled — the thieves had made off with every piece of furniture and artwork in the lobby. While neither the purloined furnishings nor the ambitious burglars have been found, the folks at IKEA have decided to help out with some free stuff.

  The center, which only opened a year ago, was the victim of a mass theft in late February.

  “They took all furniture, area rug, accent pieces, pictures and our framed Rookwood art tile,” reads a Feb. 24 Facebook post from the Over-the-Rhine Community Housing project that oversees this 15-unit facility, where residents must earn 50% of the area’s median income or below.

  In response to the crime, the local IKEA decided to pitch in with some free furniture that was delivered this morning:

  @ikeawestchester replaces stolen furniture at the OVR Senior building @Fox19 http://pic.twitter.com/xJIocqgWek

  — dan wood (@danwood2) May 7, 2015

  “We are very excited to give the residents a new look,” a rep for the IKEA told FOX19 in Cincinnati. “It’s our honor to work with a great organization that gives residents independence and security in a wonderful neighborhood. We are honored to be part of this project and hope the kindness of other businesses and strangers will turn this unfortunate situation into a positive for the residents & community.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uInvestigators Stumped After Woman Finds “High-Quality” Cocaine In Her Granola Bar Wrapperr

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  (KSAT News)

  Finding prizes in your food can be fun when you’re expecting them, but one San Antonio grandmother says she certainly wasn’t expecting to shake her Nature Valley granola bar wrapper and have a baggie filled with cocaine and covered in dollar signs fall out.

  “One morning my husband and I were opening our granola bars and I like it to the very end,” the woman told KSAT News. “I was shaking the little bag out to get the crumbs when all of the sudden this little baggie popped out.”

  She did think she’d won a prize at first, as the baggie had dollar signs on it, and called up the company to see if it was some kind of promotion. The person on the other line informed her that no, it was not their doing and suggested she call the police department.

  When officers arrived and tested the contents of the baggie, they informed her it contained drugs.

  “He said, ‘Congratulations, it’s high quality cocaine,’ and I had never seen that stuff before,” the woman says.

  Though the incident happened in March, San Antonio police still aren’t sure how the cocaine got inside the wrapper — the woman says the individual packages were sealed. She’d gotten the box of granola bars from a friend who gives out samples and had leftovers, and says there was no sign that the packaging had been tampered with.

  “It is a very strange case,” said a police sergeant on the case. “In my 22 years of law enforcement I’ve never come across a case like this.”

  General Mills, the makers of Nature Valley Granola Bars, said through a spokesman that it’s sure the company isn’t at fault.

  “We referred this to the police in March and are confident this did not happen in our facility,” he said in a statement, adding, “Inside the production facility the product moves very fast and it would be extremely difficult to get something in there.”

  Narcotic officers are now trying to figure out at what point and how the drugs got inside the package, as the investigation continues.

  “The frightening aspect of it is anybody could have come in contact with this,” the sergeant says. “It could have just as easily been a child opening up this snack and finding this dangerous narcotic inside of it.”

  Woman finds cocaine in granola bar wrapper [KSAT News]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uComcast Says Customer Must Sign Non-Disclosure Agreement To Get $600 Refundr

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• When your cable company has charged you hundreds of dollars for a cable box you returned five years ago, you’d hope that the response would be “Sorry about that. Here’s your money back,” not “We’ll give you your refund if you agree to not tell anyone about this.”

  But that’s a demand that one Comcast customer says the company made of her when she disputed her years of charges for a box she’d long since given back.

  She and her husband showed Philadelphia’s Action News Troubleshooters their five years’ worth of bills showing the overcharges.

  “I am not happy about it, that’s over $600,” says the customer, who also played a recording of a voicemail allegedly left by a Comcast staffer.

  “We will issue a $600 even credit,” explains the caller, “pending that you sign a non-disclosure agreement.”

  Action News also talked to other Philly-area Comcast customers with similar equipment-related issues, but they were all offered no-strings-attached refunds from the company (after being contacted by the media, of course).

  The cable industry is notorious for failing to properly track returned equipment. Comcast recently began accepting returns via UPS Store locations to give customers some sort of paper trail when Comcast inevitably charges them for lost set-top boxes and modems.

  Yesterday, Comcast announced — as part of what it claims is an overhaul of its customer service — that it will begin issuing digital receipts for returned equipment so that there is (hopefully) less doubt about if/when/where/how a piece of equipment was handed back into Comcast’s care.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uRaiders Of The Lost Walmart Excavate More Decade-Old Video Gamesr

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• The Raiders of the Lost Walmart are an elite squad who comb the retail stores of North America for rare and precious antiquities. No, Walmart hasn’t taken to selling actual fossils: these are Information Age antiquities, or old video games for older consoles with inexplicably high prices.

  The first game that Raider Michael noticed was a fun-looking Shrek tie-in game that happens to come from 2008. While some people out there are surely still running a PlayStation 2, they are unlikely to be willing to pay thirty bucks for a game for it.

  

  If you’re sad that EA no longer makes college football games due to players’ pesky claim that they should be paid for the use of their likenesses, and you’ve still got an original Xbox chugging along in your game room, great news from a different shelf in the same Walmart!

  

  “I originally took the second picture to point out the Tiger Woods 2011 game for $29.96, Michael writes, “but upon further review, I noticed the NCAA Football 06 game for the original XBOX!” Could also be good for former football players looking to enjoy their former glory. Just don’t sue.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uJeni’s Splendid Pinpoints Source Of Listeria Contamination That Led To The Recall Of All Productsr

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  Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream announced it has found the source of its recent listeria contamination.

  The source of a listeria contamination that resulted in an Ohio-based ice cream maker recalling all of its products and temporarily closing its boutique stores has been traced to just one machine in the company’s production facility.

  Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream announced Wednesday that it pinpointed the source of the listeria contamination at its production kitchen to a single pint-filling machine, the Chicago Tribune reports.

  “We can now say that we believe we located the smoking gun,” the company said in an updated statement on its website. “Our swab testing found Listeria on the spout of one of our production machines. It is a machine we use to fill a portion of our pints.”

  Although Jeni’s initial recall included closing boutique ice cream shops, the company says the contaminated machine was not used to produce ice cream scooped at those stores.

  While the company says it will never know for certain how the bacteria got into the machine, it has now turned its focus to creating a production kitchen with the best defenses against any contamination.

  To do so, the company has enlisted top food safety experts and plans to invest more than $200,000 into the kitchen transformation.

  “While our primary focus will be on a system for the prevention of contamination, we’ll also be implementing a test-and-hold program, in which all batches of finished product will be tested for bacteria before shipping,” the company says in a statement.

  Jeni’s Splendid recalled all of its products on April 23 after the Nebraska Department of Agriculture found listeria in a random sample of the company’s products.

  The recall covered all products including ice creams, frozen yogurts, sorbets, and ice cream sandwiches sold at boutique stores in seven states and at retailers such as Whole Foods and Target.

  A week after the recall was initiated, Jeni’s announced it would dispose of 535,000 pounds of ice cream by placing it in an anaerobic digester, which provides electricity while it digests and produces fertilizer.

  Jeni’s traces listeria to ice cream pint-filling machine [The Chicago Tribune]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist