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September 29, 2009, 12:00 PM ET
Bucknell U. Investigates Letters Saying That Students Owe for Downloads
More than 300 students at Bucknell University got hit with letters from a collection agency last week charging that they had illegally downloaded material from Cayman Academic Resources and must pay $500 "to settle this matter."
Several of the students who got the letter contacted university officials and said that they had never heard of the company and that they did not do the downloading. Now Jason Friedberg, chief of public safety for the university, suspects that the letters were part of a scam. He contacted the collection agency, Advanced Collection Services, which told him it is now having trouble contacting the client and plans to rescind the letters.
When The Chronicle called Advanced Collection Services today, a woman who answered refused to answer questions about the incident and hung up abruptly. Messages to other employees of the company were not returned.
The Chronicle could not find any record of Cayman Academic Resources.
Mr. Friedberg said he has notified the U.S. Postal Service of the incident as a possible case of mail fraud.
The letter from the collection agency is suspiciously vague, said Mr. Friedberg. It is just a few sentences long, and gives no specifics on what the students supposedly downloaded or when they allegedly did so. It asks for credit-card information so that the students can pay the $500 settlement fee.
"It's a great scam," he said. "The kids are doing illegal downloading, though probably not to the extent they were a few years ago. So when they get something like this where it's only $500, they're probably thinking, Oh, we're glad it's not more," he said, referring to college students in general. "There's a desire for them to wrap it up without their parents finding out."
The university sent an e-mail message to all students, faculty members, and staff members last Tuesday alerting them to the letters and asking those who received them to contact the unversity police. More than 300 students came forward.
Mr. Friedberg said the company sent him a draft of a follow-up letter it plans to send to the students, which he shared with The Chronicle.
"When we asked for Cayman Academic Resources to provide proof of the downloads, we then discovered that Cayman is out of business and in receivership and that the proof is in a storage facility and not readily available," says the draft letter. "We apologize to any student previously contacted by us. You will not hear from us again. We have not and will not report this matter to any Credit Bureau."
Comments
1. ds3kah - September 29, 2009 at 05:59 pm
Interesting scam. There is no legal alternative focused on college anymore like the former cdigix or ruckus, and since piracy continues, there is an easy way for these scam artists to get credit card #'s from unsuspecting students.
2. esselan - September 30, 2009 at 09:07 am
Isn't it just commonsense to assume anything that includes the word "Cayman" is a scam?
3. lcrandal - September 30, 2009 at 09:50 am
Collection agencies need better regulation by the states. They appear to make little or no effort to verify the validity of claims before starting a series of letters and phone calls. The refusal of their representative to stay on the phone and discuss the issue is typical. Their draft letter sounds like "oops we got caught" type CYA behavior to me.
4. classicalprof - September 30, 2009 at 04:10 pm
Kudos to Bucknell for actually supporting their students. I suspect they wouldn't have gotten very far on their own.
5. jodyhd453 - October 01, 2009 at 03:25 pm
I hope none of the students gave this fraudulent company their credit card numbers.
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