Those of you who saw last week’s post are fully aware of the attempt to take advantage of me and my … uh … digestive byproducts. And, like me, you might have thought the story would end there. No such luck.

A week ago Saturday, I received registered mail, purporting to be from Exact Sciences, the makers of Cologuard. I signed for the mail and opened the envelope with trepidation. Inside, I found a letter and a report. (You can see the letter and a redacted and annotated copy the report here.) Needless to say, given what had transpired previously, I was rattled.

I called my PCP again. I was reassured, again, that it was a scam. I called Exact Sciences, which refused to give me any information based on the ID number or the Order ID number on the report without my giving them my name and date of birth. I assured them I was crazy, but I wasn’t stupid. I then called my Health-insurance provider. They were able to verify, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was, indeed a scam.

Then the plot thickened.

The Devil’s in the Details

After speaking with the insurance company, I searched on the number given to Anne when she was called last week. I did the search on two different browsers. The first search returned this, in part:

The search on the second browser took me to the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service (HHS), Office of Inspector General (OIG). It confirmed the results from the first search.

After that, I decided to use various AI-powered searches to see if I could find the source of The Great Cologuard Scam. I should have known: It was the infamous Nigerian Prince.

Typically, the Nigerian Prince tries to pull an advance-fee fraud, in which, for example, he’ll contend his wealthy Uncle Herman or some other person with access to a large fortune needs help transferring Money out of his country. He’ll promise a huge share of the funds if the mark will pay some fee upfront for taxes or bank charges and provide personal information like a bank-account number, an EIN, or a shoe size. Once the mark complies, the Prince takes a powder, along with the mark’s money. But this dude was clever.

This is how The Great Cologuard Scam works:

1. The Prince verified that human feces contain trace metals like zinc, copper, iron, manganese, and sometimes lead or cadmium due to environmental contamination or occupational exposure.
2. He found a manufacturing company to produce exact duplicates of the Cologuard kits, along with a printer to duplicate the Patient Guide and the usage instructions that come with the kit.
3. He recruited a lab to receive all the specimens from the Cologuard kits that were used and returned — postage paid — and to extract the trace metals from the specimens.
4. The lab then sends the extracted metals to a specialized metal refinery and the Prince is paid:

• $1.10 to $1.30 a pound for lead
• $3.30 for $4.00 a pound for copper
• $0.03 to $0.10 a pound for iron
• $0.20 to $0.30 a pound for manganese
• $0.90 to $1.10 a pound for lead
• $1.00 to $1.50 a pound for cadmium.

That may not seem like a very profitable business model. But the Nigerian Prince has been around the block a few times, and he’s no dummy. He knows most people who fall for scams like this are full of shit.

Be careful out there, kids.

Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/

Mark O'Brien Writer, Blogger

I'm the founder and principal of O'Brien Communications Group (obriencg.com) and the co-founder and President of EinSource (einsource.com). I'm a lifelong writer. My wife, Anne, and I have two married sons and four grandchildren. I'm having the time of my life.