The Herald reports on how Niko Flimetakis, owner of Time Out Burgers, was nearly scammed:

“I’m really lucky,” said Flimetakis, who wanted to tell his story to warn others,

Here it is:

Flimetakis got a call late last week from a relay service, which receives messages over the Internet from people who are hard of hearing and reads them to others over the phone. The service said it represented a caller who wanted to order about $1,500 worth of catered food that he said was for his mother’s birthday party. “It was a long conversation,” Flimetakis said. In addition to 150 chicken kebabs and other items, the caller wanted Flimetakis to pay a service about $900 to come get the food and transport it to the party in a vehicle with warming ovens to keep the food warm and safe. He was to send the $900 to a company by Western Union. Payment was all to be by the caller’s credit card. Flimetakis said the card cleared, so he wired the delivery money by Western Union.

It sounded like a nice piece of business. But he started having second thoughts when the card company that handles his merchant account called the next morning.

Read the rest at the Heralds’s Business Insider