If you’re a bar or restaurant owner who recently received a missive from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission claiming you’ve been busted for selling booze to the underage or the inebriated, fret not: It’s not real — especially if that very same letters offers to forget all about that violation in exchange for $500 on a cash card.
Hard to believe someone thought they could get away with it, especially once you see the letter below branded with the logo of something called “The Eagle Eye Shield,” which is not a real thing. But the TABC says retailers in Dallas-Fort Worth, Arlington and Houston have received what the TABC’s classifying as a “suspected extortion scam.” And that’s why the TABC is teaming up with the United States Postal Inspection Service — “to identify the culprits,” says the TABC’s spokesperson, Chris Porter.
Porter says investigators first learned about the scam in October.
Retailer in Dallas-Fort Worth “reported receiving letters claiming that a third-party observer had witnessed violations of the Alcoholic Beverage Code at that retailer’s business,” Porter says in a release. “The letters went on to state that those alleged violations would be reported to TABC unless the business owner/operator agreed to pay $500 using an anonymous cash-card payment.”
Which should have been the immediate, obvious clue that the letters weren’t real. Like, at all. … [visit site to read more]
