Perpetual scams target school boosters

Published 10:47 pm Sunday, September 27, 2009

P.T. Barnum of the Barnum and Bailey Circus is widely believed to be the author of the popular phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

He didn’t say it. Somebody else did — referring to people who would do business with him — but more on that later.

I was thinking about the phase because it truly must be the scammer’s mantra.

Nearly every major event, season or activity seems to have a scam attached to it. Those scams never truly die, they just morph into something slightly different to meet the times and circumstances.

The latest example is a pitch going on in Lake Stevens to sell businesses on paying for a high school sports poster billed as a fundraiser for the school district.

Arlene Hulten, director of communications for the district, said there is no such fundraiser. But it is now high school football season, so she’s not surprised that this company, supposedly out of Idaho Falls, Idaho, is asking businesses for money.

“This happens every year,” she said. “It could be three or four different companies in different states.”

Lake Stevens is not alone.

Most school districts see such pitches, either for posters, or calendars or game schedules and the like.

“Many businesses say, ‘Sure, we like to support the schools,’” Hulten said. “Then their check is cashed, they never hear any more about it and they never see the poster.”

Hulten is putting out the word to businesses about the Lake Stevens con game. But businesses throughout Snohomish County should look out for it.

“It’s a never-ending scam,” Hulten said. “They’re obviously successful at it because they do it every year.”

She suggested the businesses never provide any money for posters and the like billed as a school sports fundraiser without first calling the district. In Lake Stevens, she asked that people call the athletic director.

Officials don’t mind the calls.

“Schools rely directly on businesses for support for a variety of things,” she said. “We want to honor that support and ensure that when they do support us, they’re doing the right thing.

Now back to Barnum and his suckers.

According to the nonprofit Web site HistoryBuff.com, the phrase was uttered around 1870 by David Hannum, who represented a group that had paid $30,000 for the figure of a giant that had been found in the earth by some men drilling a well.

It had been billed as a real giant that had turned to stone.

Called the Cardiff Giant, it was a major tourist attraction that thousands of people paid 50 cents each to see. Barnum tried to buy the giant and was rebuffed, so he had one made and started charging visitors $1 to cash in on the popularity.

Hannum believed that the giant he had purchased was real and that Barnum’s was fake, hence the phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Ultimately, a man named George Hull admitted making the Cardiff Giant out of gypsum — a soft lime rock with blue streaks that look like veins — and burying it for a year before having someone hire the well drillers who made the find.

That Hannum paid $30,000 thinking he was getting a real giant that had turned to stone and that Barnum was able to get people to pay a dollar to look at a second giant really does prove there are a lot of suckers out there.

Don’t join them.

Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459, benbow@heraldnet.com.