A New Jersey man who was once dubbed “Citizen of the Year” pleaded guilty yesterday to charges that he deliberately placed cat food on city officials’ properties in an attempt to lure feral felines and hopefully highlight the feral cat problem in the area. [More]
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“Citizen Of The Year” Lures Feral Cats To City Officials’ Homes… To Prove Point About Feral Cats
By 9.24.13
Scammer Threatens To Blow Up Kmart If Prepaid Debit Card Isn’t Filled
By 9.12.13
While the man in the earlier story who mentioned that he might get a machine gun and use it against the employees of a customer service call center was improperly venting his frustration, the person who called in a bomb threat to a New Jersey Kmart was just trying to scam the store out of some money. [More]
Chase: Refunding A Scam Victim Is The Same As Forgiving A Debt
By 9.9.13
When you successfully convince your credit card company that you were scammed out of thousands of dollars and that a chargeback should be issued, you’d think that would be the end of the story, but not for one Chase credit card customer who just found out — two years after receiving the money back — that Chase now says the refund is actually a forgiven debt, and that he must pay income taxes on it. [More]
Video Proves Traffic Lights Are Rigged To Issue More Tickets, Or Maybe It Proves They Aren’t
By 8.28.13
Red-light cameras — those automated devices that snap photos of drivers caught zipping illegally through an intersection — are a hot-button topic across the country, as cash-strapped governments employ them as a cost-effective way to bring in revenue while opponents claim they are often inaccurate. One New Jersey lawmaker says he has definitive video proof that some traffic lights are rigged to snag a higher number of drivers on camera, but the maker of the cameras says the video actually proves just the opposite. [More]
Customers Accidentally Enter Closed Store, Leave Cash At Unmanned Counter
By 8.27.13
Back in college, I remember coming across an accidentally unlocked snack machine early one morning. It would have been so easy to just steal all the knock-off Doritos and not-quite-Oreos we wanted, but my university has a very strict honor code and we could have been kicked out of school for pilfering the bargain foodstuffs. And so we reluctantly chose to close the machine and secure the lock. On Sunday night, a group of young men in New Jersey faced a similar quandary, except they could have boosted everything from a store that had accidentally been left unlocked. [More]
Travel Club Scammers Plead Guilty To Bilking Millions From Consumers
By 8.8.13
After years of tricking New Jersey residents into paying millions of dollars to bogus “travel clubs,” a husband and wife scammer team have entered guilty pleas, and at least one of them will probably spend a few years behind bars. [More]
TGI Fridays Franchisee To Pay $500,000 For Selling Cheap Booze As Top-Shelf Stuff
By 7.31.13
Back in May, New Jersey officials undertook “Operation Swill,” raiding 29 restaurants and bars in the state — including 13 TGI Fridays locations — accusing them of misleading consumers by putting less-expensive liquor in bottles for top-shelf brands. Today, the owner of those Fridays eateries agreed to settle with the state and pay a $500,000 fine. [More]
Casino’s “You Can’t Lose” Refund Promotion Is Really Just Meant To Keep You Gambling
By 7.22.13
The casino always wins in the end. If it didn’t, we’d all be rich and casino-owners would be smashing open piggy banks to pay the bills. So when a house of gambling tells customers that it really wants to do something nice and will refund their slot-machine losses, you should expect that there is more to the offer than meets the eye. [More]
United Passenger Guilty Of Sexually Assaulting Sleeping Female Traveler
By 7.19.13
We want to believe this will discourage idiots from trying something like this in the future, but we don’t hold out too much hope. A New Jersey man could spend the rest of his life in prison after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman while she slept during a United Airlines flight. [More]
Lost Bus Driver Adds 100 Minutes To Morning Commute, Gets Angry When Passengers Try To Help
By 6.14.13
Remember those Sunday versions of the Family Circus comic where Bil Keane would use a dotted line to trace the adventures of one of the little scamps who did everything but get the milk they were sent to the store to buy? Well, replace that wholesome scene with an angry, lost bus driver and a busload of worried passengers and you have an idea of what happened yesterday in New Jersey. [More]
Jersey Shore Landlord Caught Renting Out Uninhabitable Properties And Homes He Doesn’t Own
By 6.6.13
The New Jersey coastline can be a goldmine for owners of rental properties, as vacationers flock to the Atlantic Ocean every summer looking to rent for anything from a few days to the entire season. But one landlord is accused of bilking dozens of renters by taking their money for homes not fit for human habitation, some of which he doesn’t even own anymore. [More]
New Jersey Sues Gas Stations For Selling Aviation Fuel As Unleaded Gasoline
By 5.29.13
When most people fuel up at a gas station, especially one belonging to a national chain, they do so under the assumption that they are filling their car up with whatever gasoline they have selected from the pump. But authorities in New Jersey say that several stations were deceiving customers — and putting their cars at risk — by selling them leaded aviation gas (or avgas) under the guise of unleaded gasoline. [More]
13 TGI Fridays Restaurants Among Those Busted In NJ For Selling Cheap Booze As Premium Pours
By 5.23.13 — Updated: 5.24.13
You might not be surprised to find that a sketchy dive bar is refilling its empty bottles of liquor with cheaper booze, but many consumers probably don’t expect a chain restaurant to get involved in such underhanded hanky-panky. And yet, 15 of the 29 places caught in yesterday’s sting by New Jersey liquor regulators are outlets of national chain eateries — and almost all of those were TGI Fridays. [More]
Customer Sues CVS For Writing Her Name As “Ching Chong” On Receipt
By 4.18.13
How many times do we have to tell the cashiers of America to STOP PUTTING STUPID AND OFFENSIVE NAMES ON CUSTOMERS’ RECEIPTS? Sorry we had to go all-caps on you there, but after all the stories of idiotic name-calling that have gotten employees fired and retailers sued, you’d think people would stop. And yet here we have the story of a CVS customer of Korean descent who is suing the drugstore chain after allegedly being labeled “Ching Chong Lee” on her receipt. [More]
State Goofs, Demands Man Pay Back $17,000 In Unemployment Benefits
By 4.15.13
Back in 2007, when a newly unemployed New Jersey man decided to relocate to South Carolina, he checked with the state to let them know about the move and to make sure he was filing all his unemployment records properly. $17,000 and multiple assurances from state employees later, he was suddenly told he needed to repay all that money. [More]
Comfort Food Crime Wave: Thief Tows Away Entire 40-Foot Shipping Container Of Hamburgers
By 4.11.13
The crime wave carrying off the world’s comfort food by the truckload is only continuing and escalating. From maple syrup in Québec and Maine to Nutella in Germany and soup in Florida, criminals are carrying off many of our tastiest and most comforting foods. Now, criminals in New Jersey have made off with an entire refrigerated shipping container of hamburger patties. Not the burgers! [More]
Hospital Sends Patient To Collections For Bill His Insurance Company Had Already Paid
By 3.15.13
We understand that hospitals often get patients using the emergency room as a “free” clinic, and that it may be less of a headache to turn unpaid bills over to a collections agency than it is to chase down debtors on your own. But hospitals shouldn’t be tossing patients to the collections lions if the patients’ insurance provider has already paid the bill. [More]
Court Rules Airline Doesn’t Need To Accept Cash For In-Flight Purchases
By 2.25.13
There’s a widely held belief that because dollar bills are legal tender that all cash must be accepted by any business for any purchase. This simply isn’t true, but try telling that to the man who sued Continental Airlines for refusing to let him buy $8 worth of stuff with cash during a flight. [More]
