I quickly remembered who Amy Yates is – she is the teleporting-signature changing VP of Watson Brooks!  Able to personally sign thousands of letters all postmarked from different locations!

I open the message up to find legal threats against my post on their letter they sent to me…

Wow – serving me a legal notice on Facebook?  That is soooo Web 2.0.

In the spirit of the many signature of Amy Yates, her Facebook profile picture looks suspiciously like a stock photograph:

Amy could be in a catalog somewhere!  I did a quick image search for a “business woman”, but couldn’t track down the source image of this photo – anyone out there have Sherlock-Holmes tracking skills for stock photography?  I would really love to find it…

Amy Yates "Herself"

I’m tempted to add Miss “Multiple Signature Personality” Amy Yates as my friend and see what she does.  Anyways, in the spirit of my last post on Watson Brooks, I’m updating the list of phone numbers they use based on your comments.  It amazes me that a “legitimate” company would need so many phone numbers for their valuable prize giveaways…

Update 8/19/09: Many thanks to commenter “Rich” for finding the stock photo of my good Facebook friend Miss “Amy Yates”.  Stock Photo 1, Stock Photo 2.  I love that these were found!

I have to admit, they got me curious enough to open it by hand addressing the envelope.

Upon opening it, I found out that I was the lucky recipient of an award!  Two round trip airline tickets!  Congrats to me!  Reading a bit further, I even found out that this was my last notice – apparently they had attempted to contact me previously…

Yes!  I just need to call (214)-932-0716 and I can receive my winnings!  Hell, even Amy Yates personally signed the letter; it must be legit!  A quick glance at their website and Google search surprisingly didn’t turn up much information on this company.  I fell upon another of their shell companies: “Lambert Steel” which has oddly familiar scamsite – also looks like they are associated with CVI Travel.

From what I can tell, the letters are often postmarked from AZ, NY, NJ, FL, TX or CA – but never a return address.  Who signs the letter varies; at the very least between my beloved Amy Yates and Julie Harris.  The existing phone numbers associated with the scam are:

973-302-9053

214-932-0716

302-365-8228

480-281-0118

480-567-1642

732-676-4053

303-242-3511

And I’m sure many many more.  Do not respond to these letters if you get one – they will try to reach you numerous times.

Anyone else have information about this slime-ball “company”?

UPDATE 7/15: The only action I can see taking against this company is filing a report at the BBB.  Any other suggestions that don’t involve TP-ing Amy Yates house?

UPDATE 7/22: Legal threats made to me via Facebook from Amy Yates “herself”!  Post also contains updated list of phone numbers used from people in this comment thread.

UPDATE 7/24: Thanks to commenter “Bart” for finding a couple other names they go under!  Avoid Spencer Burns, Donovan Rich, and Hammond Reed (although this one appears to have lapsed the domain registration).  It also appears that they have gotten our contact info via job sites such as Monster and Career Builder.

UPDATE 8/8: One more company name to add to the list: Bradley Tate.  If you have lost track of all the names this company uses, we are up to at least 6.  Bradley Tate, Spencer Burns, Hammond Reed, Donovan Rich, Lambert Steel, and Watson Brooks; all having the exact same website sending out the same letters with the same letterhead but different shell company name.  The sites tend to go dormant quickly once the word is out that its the same scamming company.

Here is the hand signed letter for my “winnings”:

Horror stories about people losing extremities while using these sorts of fireworks make me hesitant to mess around with them.  The guys I was with were more than confident at their own handling and use of these digit-destroyers.  One guy even went as far to say:

“Fireworks are perfectly safe as long as you use them properly”

This quote was tested and proven about 20 minutes later when we were scurrying around with hoses putting out three separate grass fires produced by one of these “proper” uses of fireworks.  Luckily, nobody was hurt – save for some egos.

All in all we had a great time with some great friends.  Possum Kingdom is a gorgeous lake.  The sheer cliff walls and clear blue skies made for a picturesque setting.  After a couple of days, we had our fill of plenty of sun, wake boarding, fireworks, and beer, and today we are nursing our wounds.  Some of us even needed to begin the wounds nursing in the middle of the yesterday:

My Saturday mornings usually consist of me attempting to sleep in while cats paw at my face and attack my toes, but this past Saturday was different – I actually slept in.  I awoke, immediately thinking “That’s odd, the cats never bothered me this morning…”  Maybe they had matured to the point where they don’t feel the insessant need to torture me when I’m trying to sleep in.  Who knows?

I grab a morning cup of coffee, and walk to the office to check my e-mail, and that is where I found the evidence.  The window screen in the office had been pushed out, and it looked like the cats had had an early morning adventure outside.  That vague uneasy feeling was in the pit of my stomach – we don’t normally let our cats outside.  Soon enough though, the cats came into the office from the living room, putting on their usually innocent eyes act.  It didn’t work though; you could see the muddy cat paw prints on the windowsill.  Caught muddy pawed.

Of course, now I’m trying to figure out if I need to screw the screen so that when the windows are open, we don’t have any more jail-breaks.

We joined the C+ league, not really knowing where our skill levels were.  I quickly found out I could be most of the players in this league, the only real challenges were two 15 year old guys who were very fast learners.  These guys knew that I was there biggest challenge and that they were mine.  I beat the first one early on in the season when he was still ramping up his skills, and I barely lost to the second later on in the season.  Now, the season ends up recycling matches, so I ended up playing the first guy again at the end of the season, but this time he was more prepared.

The past couple weeks, I had noticed a 20-something watching me play quite a bit, and I knew he was playing with those 15 year olds.  I found out a bit later that he was informally coaching them, teaching them my weaknesses and how to play against me.  So when this final matchup came between me and the first 15 year old, I was shocked to see an audience watching the match.

The cheering section, which included the 15 year old’s parents, girlfriend, informal coach, and his other 15 year old friend were cheering (which somehow felt like jeering) at every point he got.  I felt a bit like the Russian in one of the Rocky movies, minus the steroids.  It seemed as though from the day I beat this kid, he was gunning for me, waiting for this rematch.  I’d see the 20-something informal coach giving signals to the 15 year old, reminding him of “what they talked about”.  Out of the blue, towards the end of our games, I started hearing solitary claps after I played well.  Had they decided to pity me?  Nope.  It was the guy I joined the league with watching our game.

In the end, I lost, which caused me to slip from first place in the league to 3rd place; two points behind one 15 year old and 1 point behind the other.  Hey, I couldn’t let the Russian win!

Today at work, the following email exchange took place:

To: brah.john

From: Older Coworker

Check out this – I did not know this.

I quickly did my 10 seconds of research, and replied.

To: Older Coworker

From: brah.john

You can’t fool us whippersnappers.  We have teh internets.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/humor/batteryhack.asp

And then, as if he were paid to set himself up royally, he replied back.

To: brah.john

From: Older Coworker

At least us old farts know how to spell.  I’m not sure what “teh” means:)

Laughing hysterically in my cube, my response merely contained a link to the Urban Dictionary definition of “Teh Internets“, of which the first definition is:

teh internets:  A word often used scornfully to point out a newbie‘s lack of knowledge of the internet and distinctive language.  “OMG, liek, this is your first time on TEH INTERNETS!!!”

She will be dearly missed.

Thank you to all that came to the visitations and funeral.

The funeral home put up a nice website for pictures, memories, and a guest book here.