Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Baseball Player Phone Card Scam

Today at 12:00 p.m. in front of the Major League Baseball’s headquarters at 245 Park Avenue, the Neighborhood Retail Alliance will join Councilman Hiram Monseratte, the Bodega Association of the United States, famed civil rights attorney Norman Siegel as well as various community groups and residents to expose a multi-million dollar scam involving fraudulent pre-paid calling cards. These Grandes Ligas cards were endorsed by famous Dominican-born players like Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, Octavio Dotel, Miguel Tejada, and Vladimir Guerrero (without permission from the MLB) and sold to unsuspecting bodegas and predominately Latino customers who believed that the advertised number of minutes was accurate.

The full release for today’s press conference can be found here.

Since the news about this has leaked out, we’ve received more and more complaints and are realizing that this is quite a large, city-wide problem. If you have had any problems with the cards feel free to contact us info@momandpopnyc.com or call 917-859-3903. For some background stories on the scandal check out these links:

NY Post 1, NY Post 2
NY1
Boston Herald
Boston ABC 5
Dominican Times