by Jennifer Burnham, Mid-America Publishing
Hampton residents Aimee and Bill Reichenbacher are urging others in the community to remain vigilant as they recently learned a fraudulent website was created under the guise of their custom farming business, D&R Machine.
“The website was very well done and looked very legitimate, listing many large pieces of equipment for sale,” Aimee said. “A 50 percent going out of business sale was advertised on Facebook ads as well.”
The website was first brought to their attention by several people and then someone eventually called the Greater Franklin County Chamber of Commerce to ask about the legitimacy of the business. The Chamber of Commerce then reported the fraudulent activity to the Franklin Co
unty Sheriff’s Office, which reached out to the Reichenbachers.
Since then, the Reichenbachers have reported the website to the Federal Trade Commission, Better Business Bureau, a
nd Google — asking other concerned parties to do the same. They’ve contacted the banks that have been listed on the invoices. And they’ve made a
public post on their personal Facebook account to share what has happened.
Unfortunately, despite all of their efforts, the website is still up and running. Aimee said they are frustrated, as they haven’t been able to find an easy way to get it shut down. To help others, Aimee shared some of the red flags they noticed about the fraudulent website: “When the phone number listed was called a foreign-sounding English speaker answered with echoes of other speakers in the background, such as a telemarketing call.
When people ordered equipment through the website, they received an invoice with our information. But the listing for wire payment had our address but a different business name. When closely inspecting the pictures on the site, you can tell that the logos on the hats and shirts have been removed and replaced with a logo they made with our company name.”
Aimee stated that the business name and its information was only accessible through the State of Iowa’s business listings, and their information was not known to the public by any other online platform.
To her knowledge, nobody has paid money to those behind the website, and she hopes it stays that way.“I hope we can get this figured out soon and that others can learn from our experience,” she said.
