POLICE: Scam targets Rotary Club members Palo Alto member loses $500 to fast-talking con artist Palo Alto police are warning local Rotary Club members to beware of some scam artists who have targeted them.

Detective Jim Coffman said a Palo Alto Rotary Club member got a call Dec. 10 from someone who said he was the president of the Amsterdam Rotary Club. The man said that the son of his club's secretary was traveling in California but lost his wallet in Yosemite and needed travel money to get back home.

The Palo Alto club member later met a man at Stanford Hospital, gave him $500, and arranged transportation to San Francisco Airport.

Later, another Palo Alto Rotary Club member got a fax from the Rotary national office warning members of a scam involving a supposed Rotarian from Amsterdam, and the Palo Alto club member knew she had been had.

"They are talkers, that's what they do," Coffman said of the scam artists. "They come up with fairly believable stories."

Asking for help from a Rotary Club member is a tempting scam because Rotary Club members have an ethic of helping out fellow Rotarians from elsewhere. Anyone getting such a telephone asking for money should call Coffman at 329-2307.

Coffman said he believed the scam artist or artists have Rotary Club directories or mailing lists. But they were lucky in one way this time. They might have ended up calling Rotary Club member Chris Durkin, who also happens to be Palo Alto's police chief.

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Dear 5180 Presidents: As embarrassing as this is to admit, I had a disturbing occurrence happen to me yesterday and want all of you to watch out for the same. A person posing as the Rotary President of Hyde Park Rotary, London (there is no Hyde Park Rotary Club in London, by the way), contacted me to ask for assistance. The story goes that his club's secretary's son was traveling in California, and the son's rental car was stolen near Nevada. He lost his passport, all his money, and his other belongings. The "president," calling himself David Garrett, asked if I could assist the young man whose name was Andrew Kent. Apparently, he was able to get a ride from Tahoe to Roseville, and was at the Roseville Galleria (Nordstrom, actually). Of course, I fell for it. I had my office manager work with Nordstrom to page the young man. When Nordstrom informed my office that it had located him, I picked him up. He was very knowledgably about Rotary, and we had a long talk about his "father's Rotary Club." I gave him $300 and drove him to the Sacrament bus station so he could get to San Francisco. He was to meet the the English Consulate the next morning to get a temporary passport so that he could catch a flight back to London that night. There are plenty additional tidbits to the story that are amusing ($300 worth of amusement), but I won't bore you with them. But the point is, as I drove back to the office, I thought that something was hinky and the story was full of inconsistencies. However, as a good Rotarian would do, I jumped to help him. Well, when I returned to the office and had time to think about it, I discovered that both a London phone number and email address that had been given my office were bogus, as well as finding out that there is no Hyde Park London Rotary Club. The real treat was finding the following articles after doing a Google search: Click to Open Web Page Click to Open Web Page

--Don Kazak