Claiming to be Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Victim Location 33760

Type of a scam Healthcare/Medicaid/Medicare

Our company received an email from a person purporting to be Mr. John D. Larkin, who is the Assistant Director of Accounts Payable for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This email contained a fraudulent purchase order asking our company to deliver 200 blood pressure cuffs and monitors to an address located at 15600 Old 41 Road, Naples, FL 34110 with attention to a Mr. Andrew K. Gianbolvo.

We became suspicious when we looked up the delivery address and saw it was in a strip industrial park/storage area and the email address was not quite right. We therefore contacted MIT directly to confirm or deny this purchase order.

While waiting on the reply from MIT, the person purporting to be Mr. Larkin called our office from (617)902-0220 and asked how soon we would deliver the items. I just told him we were waiting on the purchase order verification before shipping the items.

Some items I did pick up on. I’ve been doing Government contracts for years now and the contracting officer never calls you to find out when they are getting their equipment. Either you deliver the items in accordance with the contract or you don’t get paid.

The real Mr. Larkin is an Assistant Director and would be highly unlikely to be acting as a purchasing agent. Also, I got an out of office email from him when I sent him an email from MIT’s web site; so why would he call me on his day off? The other thing of note is that I looked on MIT’s staff directory and this number (617-902-0220) is not on there.