HELSINKI, Finland, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- Police in Finland say that Swedish scam artists who send out advertisements disguised as invoices have been extending their reach across the border.
The aim of the scam is to get some of the targeted companies to pay the bill.
Helsingin Sanomat reports that police are investigating Nord Sahko, a Swedish company that charges hefty prices for access to an energy advice Web site. Officials told the newspaper that the company has been sending direct-mail ads that look like electricity bills.
The scammers have been active in Sweden for several years, Helsingin Sanomat says. They try to word their ads carefully so that fraud will be hard to prove and to seek sums of money so small that individual cases are unlikely to be prosecuted.
But the scams can be profitable. A 26-year-old Swedish man allegedly bilked Finnish companies of half a million euros (about $650,000) when they paid for inclusion in a phony telephone book.
