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The lowly urinal deodorant generally isn't known as a troublemaker, but don't tell that to Richard Powell, treasurer of Bloomfield United Methodist Church in Des Moines, Iowa. One day an office supply company sent Bloom field a shipment of 144 urinal deodorants, even though, as Powell says, Bloomfield is a small country church with only two stalls. He knew something had to be wrong. "I knew it was a mistake because I do all the ordering, and I didn't order any urinal deodorants," Powell says.

The church called the supply company and reported the mix-up. According to Powell, the company representative was "highly indignant" at the suggestion a mistake had occurred and informed the church that the matter would be turned over to a collection agency unless they paid.

After doing some quick research, Powell discovered that Iowa state law prohibited companies from charging for unordered merchandise. He also discovered that the church was not required to return the products, so he sent them to a neighboring church as a gift. Bloomfield has not heard from the office supply company again.

Unfortunately, unscrupulous office supply companies are targeting churches with a variety of scams. They succeeded in getting Bushkill Reformed Church in Bushkill, Pennsylvania, to pay $632 on a computer maintenance contract, even though the church didn't have any PCs. Scam artists also tried to convince New Hope Baptist Church in Middleburg, Pennsylvania, to pay a $709 invoice for copier toner that they didn't order. In that case, the church caught the scam in time and didn't pay.

Jodie Bernstein, director of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection, testified be fore Congress in March 2000 that office supply fraud costs its victims, typically small businesses and nonprofit organizations, an estimated $200 million per year. The problem has reached such proportions that the FTC issued an alert to warn churches and other organizations about unscrupulous vendors, and to educate them about preventive measures.

According to the FTC, office supply scams date back to at least the late 1970s, when the Business Technology Association began to work with law enforcement agencies in prosecuting businesses making unauthorized shipments of photocopier toner. In the 20 years since, the number and variety of scams have increased. Between 1995 and 1999, for example, the FTC logged nearly 5,000 complaints about office supply fraud, and they estimate that there are many times that number of cases that go unreported. One illegitimate toner operation prosecuted by the FTC victimized 23,000 companies and nonprofit organizations over a four-year period.

According to Mike Cheney, sales consultant for the nonprofit National Church Purchasing Group, churches can spend as much as $10,000 a year or more on office supplies to maintain and operate equipment such as photocopiers, fax machines, and computers. Because of this spending churches are prime targets for scam artists.

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