Beware of Fake Coupons Counterfeit Operations
How a Virginia woman goes to prison after perfecting the art of making fake coupons.
Back in the day, I was a coupon consumerist and save tons of dollars at the supermarket and other stores that offered them. Some coupon values double and triple on occasions making the savings very visible.
Everyone has a talent and can choose to use that talent for the good of humanity or for evil against humanity, Lori Ann Talens, a 41 year old, chose the latter where she became a masterminded genius in making coupons and shopped them to the public.
Talens perfected the art of making counterfeit coupons and was a mastermind in makig the fake coupons resembled the genuine coupons and were indistigusiahsble which made many a prey for her counterfeit coupons.
She made them indistinguishable by using glossy paper, corporate logos, and a computer to stitch together disparate text, pictures, bar codes and kept track of all on spreadsheet.
This counterfeit operation ran for a little over three years, where Talens and her husband, Pacifico, cheated manufacturers and merchants of more than $31 million dollars via these bogus coupons giving consumers merchandise steep discounts or for free.
Having gotten caught, Talens has found herself sentenced to 12 years in prison for running one of the largest coupon scams in history after pleading guilty to multiple counts of fraud. Her husband, 43-years old, was sentenced to more than seven years for assisting his wife as he pleaded guilty to mail fraud.
Talens amassed nearly $400,000 selling the fake coupons to more than 2,000 customers across the country. There were about 100 companies that were adversely affected with much financial loss, Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Ziploc. One of the hardest hit was Kimberly-Clark, who lost nearly $9 million dollars.
The Talenses’ operation was one of the biggest or massive but certainly is not the only fake coupon ring. The FBI has cracked down on these operations in recent years. Across the country, bogus operations have been apprehended and closed down in Texas and California that stole millions of dollars worth of electronics with fraudulent discounts.
Social media has its benefits and upsides and it has its ills and downsides. Talenes and Pacifico used social media like Facebook and Telegram to find people that were coupon enthusiasts and they became her targets to sell them fake coupons. She even went so far as to target legitimate couponing groups, for recruitment into her scam empire. This nature of recruitment snowballed allowing millions of dollars to be gotten from her fake coupons.
Talens’ operation consisted of her designing coupons on her computer, produced a variety of forgeries, and these fake coupons were mailed across the country, accepting payments via online payment, including bitcoin and Paypal.
Alluring to the consumers was the fact that these coupons offered deals equal to or even greater than, the value of the merchandise, and the consumer got the item for free. This situation put the retailers in a bind, when the discount exceeded the price of an item, the retailers had to comply by paying the consumer for “purchasing” it.
The day of awakening came when a consumer reported the fakes to the Coupon Information Corporation. This Corporation gained access to more of the fake coupons and compared them to the fake ones in circulation, confirming they were fakes, and proceeded with an investigation with the assistance of the U.S. Postal service.
Thereafter, the Talens’ operation was raided at her home in Virginia Beach by federal law enforcement. During this raid, they confiscated $1 million worth of fake coupons and 13,000 coupon designs on her computer. After comparing these fake designs to the counterfeits in circulation, it was confirmed by the Coupon Information Corporation that the Talenses had scammed manufactures and sellers out of $31.8 million.
The Talens operation even included scamming Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program out of an estimated $43,000 over a four-year period by not reporting her and her husband’s total net worth.
In conclusion, consumers can safeguard themselves from such scams as these by not purchasing coupons. Coupons being sold is a sure-fire red flag that the coupons being sold are counterfeit. When in doubt, investigate. There are always federal resources to contact online and elsewhere.
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