When Michael Clarey went online on Sunday to check the day’s sales for his family-owned sweets shop, he noticed the numbers were lower than usual. It struck him as a little odd, but the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory franchise owner chalked it up to soaring temperatures keeping everyone inside.
It wasn’t until about 9:30 p.m., when one of his young employees at the Happy Valley store called him sobbing, that he realized something was terribly wrong.
The store’s two employees had shut the store two and a half hours before closing time, taken more than $1,000 in cash from the shop, driven to downtown Portland, put the money on MoneyPak prepaid debit cards and transferred the money to a man claiming to be “with corporate,” Clarey said. By the time the employees, one in her late teens and the other in her early 20s, realized it was all an elaborate scam, the money was gone.
“The money’s not in the store,” Clarey remembers one of the young, frightened employees repeating over the phone.
No arrests have been made in connection with the scam, Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Ross Clemson said.
The scam started around 6:30 p.m. Sunday, when a man called the store and told the employees their boss, Michael Clarey, was being investigated on charges of counterfeiting. The man on the phone claimed to be a company official and said a police investigator was on the line.
If employees didn’t take all the cash out of the store and follow his instructions, they would be arrested, Clarey said the scammer told the employees. The scammer also forbade them from telling their boss what they were doing, because it would tip him off.
Frightened by the threat of being arrested, the employees drove first to a drugstore near Happy Valley then to two in Portland and put all the money in MoneyPak cards. Following the scammer’s instructions, they stayed on the phone with him the whole time, even as they counted out cash at the drugstore checkout counters.
They then sent the card numbers to the man they believed was a corporate officer, who quickly swept up the funds, said John Clarey, Michael’s father and a co-owner of the business.
As the two employees trekked around Portland that night, one of the employee’s parents tracked her daughter’s phone on Life 360, an app that allows family members to see each other’s location. The parent saw their daughter wasn’t at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and called her.
It was then that the two young women realized they had been duped, Michael Clarey said.
They rushed back to the sweets store and called their boss. The Clareys met up with the two “visibly upset” young women at the store and pieced together the story, John Clarey said.
“You’re not fired,” he remembers telling the employees. “We all learned a lesson tonight.”
The story the scammer told the employees sounds far-fetched on the page, but when sold well on the phone or in person, it often works. Americans lost more than $10 billion to fraud in 2023, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Cameron Nakashima, a spokesperson for Better Business Bureau, a nonprofit that accredits businesses and aims to promote marketplace trust, explained that small businesses are particularly vulnerable to financial scams because they don’t have meaningful resources for training and other protections.
Young, entry-low level employees make easy targets as well.
By pretending to be high-up corporate officers, scammers “play into psychology” because they know new staff will hesitate to question authority, Nakashima said.
Scammers are salesmen; they create a sense of urgency and fear, and stoke it by keeping their targets on the phone, Nakashima said.
“If people get off the phone, they’re going to cool down and put two and two together,” he said.
John Clarey acknowledged that Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory needs to better educate its 11 employees about scams, but he also questioned how staff at the drugstore checkout counters didn’t know something was wrong.
“You see two employees, they’re young, they’re crying, they’ve got their uniforms on and they’ve got a bag of cash,” John Clarey said. “Yet you’re still selling them a card without questioning it?”
Clemson, the sheriff’s office spokesperson, said this is the first time he’s heard of a scam like this affecting a local business. It’s not clear why the scammer chose Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, though the sheriff’s office has seen similar schemes targeting the elderly, Clemson said.
He urged people to alert police as soon as they receive a suspicious call.
Michael Clarey said he’s grateful that people in Happy Valley are supporting his business in the aftermath of the scam. Monday, after news had spread in the community, was the busiest ever for the store, he said.
“It really humbles you to know people have your back,” he said.
— Sujena Soumyanath is a reporter on The Oregonian/OregonLive’s public safety team. You can reach her at 503-221-4309 or ssoumyanath@oregonian.com.