Fairbanks Funeral Home director Grant Cochran says a long-distance transaction with the phony company cost the funeral home a total of eleven-hundred dollars. He sold a casket to a buyer calling from Nigeria, via T-T-Y, a special phone service for the hearing-impaired.

Cochran received payment in three 950-dollar US Postal Service money orders. A couple weeks later the money orders were deemed counterfeit and returned.

Since the casket didn't go anywhere, Cochran will be able to resell it, reducing his loss.

Another local resident, Heather Andrulli of North Pole, resisted a T-T-Y call recently after placing an ad in the News-Miner to sell a dog after deciding the queries about the animals were strange.

Nigeria is often talked about as a center for scammers, but many complaints originate just over the border in Canada, as well as in Japan, South America, England, Ireland and the Middle East.

By The Associated Press