Recently I have been getting calls from schools telling me they have received a letter from an “alumnus” about a new “alumni web-site”. The funny thing is that all these letters are from the same person!
This is a fraud you may have been exposed to. Perhaps you or one of your staff received the letter about a new “alumni web-site”, possibly from someone named Kathy Harris, Sarah Benton, or Amy Harrison. This same exact letter has been sent to many schools across the country.
It’s now obvious these web sites were not created by alumni, but instead by a company named AlumniClass.com in Washington. It’s unfortunate they create these sites and pass them off as being built for you.
We suggest you review how your web site came to link to alumniclass.com, and perhaps remove it or replace it with something official.
The letter is as follows:
Dear Principal,
Hello. A few of us have gotten together and had an alumni web-site built for all alumni to use. This site will allow all alumni one central location to stay in touch without being spread all over many national alumni sites, plan reunions and have the privacy other services cannot provide. We would like to ask if you could put our site up under an alumni link for all alumni to find and use. This site will handle all reunion information and allow classmates to find each other and communicate. The site will be managed daily, so the school does not have to worry about uploading any details. Furthermore, we mention on the site, “this site has no association with the school or the school district.” Also, we will keep a clean site by approving all text and photos before anything is posted and will not have any ads or pop up banners appear. If you could put this link up it would be a great help to all alumni and classes planning reunions, plus benefit the school by us answering all reunion questions the school now receives.
Thank you for your time.
Kathy Harris
Kathyh4949@live.com
A second communication:
Subject: Please help for our reunion
Hello, I was wondering if you could please help out the alumni. We’ve received some inquiries that more people may be willing to attend a multi-class reunion, due to the raising cost in travel. There is a survey on the home page of our alumni site in regards to a multi class reunion. Can you please add the alumni link to the school’s website so more alumni respond? The link is:
http://www.alumniclass.com/. . .Thanks so much for your help,
Sarah Benton
Another article on the web has reported finding between 50,000 and 100,000 copies of the above letters posted by various schools across the country using Google. That is why we have reason to look into this further. Just search a small 6 or 8 word portion of the text to get an idea for yourself.
If you wish to report this fraud, you may contact the US Postal Inspector. Fax copies of these letters and email messages to the following address:
Attn: Diana Morgan
U.S. Postal Inspector – Mail Fraud Division
Fax number: 312-669-5651
Phone number: 1-877-876-2455 regarding AlumniClass.com