False Rumor: Gerber Products SettlementDateline: 10/01/97Reports that Gerber Products Co. must pay out $500 savings bonds to American children in a class action settlement are falseby David Emery Another major hoax is crisscrossing the U.S. via fax and email, this one claiming that Gerber Products Co, the baby food manufacturer, recently lost a class action lawsuit and must now make amends in the form of a $500 savings bond for every child born in America between 1985 and 1997. These claims are categorically false. No such litigation took place, nor has Gerber been ordered to pay restitution of any kind to the public. Any information you receive to the contrary should not be trusted or acted upon. Rumors of the class action settlement first surfaced late last year, reappearing off and on since then in the form of notices exhorting parents to file claims on behalf of their children. In the notices, recipients are urged to claim their settlements by mailing photocopies of their children's birth records and Social Security cards to a Post Office box in Minneapolis. This has led some to suggest that the rumors began as a setup for an elaborate scam, since birth and social security documents can be used to obtain fraudulent credit. That theory is confounded, however, by the curious fact that the Minneapolis address belonged for a time to a legitimate clearinghouse for claimants in another class action suit unrelated to Gerber. According to one news source, the company administering that settlement was deluged last December with inquiries regarding the nonexistent Gerber case, receiving over a million pieces of mail and nearly 250,000 phone calls in one three-day period alone. The company reports that it will destroy all the hoax-inspired mail it received. The Post Office box is now closed. Gerber Products Co. has also been overwhelmed with inquiries ever since the hoax began. Just last month it received more than 18,000 phone calls regarding the alleged settlement, a flood which shows few signs of abating as the rumors continue to be propagated all across the country. "The notices are being posted in hospitals," a spokesperson told The Chicago Tribune. "Teachers are sending them home with students. And one corporation even put the notice in with their paychecks." In response, the company has notified the attorneys general of all 50 states of the existence of the hoax, as well as posted a press release on its corporate Website and elsewhere, urging the public not to file claims or send birth records through the mail. These measures seem to have had little effect thus far. "We don't believe it's a scam," said a corporate officer. "We think it's just misinformation." Through it all, Gerber has taken the position that the hoax poses no real threat to anyone. "We don't believe it's a scam," a corporate officer told Knight-Ridder. "We think it's just misinformation." These words may amount to no more than wishful thinking. The truth is, when public gullibility is elicited on such a grand scale, con artists do crawl out of the woodwork to take advantage. To cite a conspicuous example, the following message was posted last month on the Internet: Subject: $500 Savings Bond for kids under 12 What this demonstrates, as the rumors rage on, is that while the Gerber rumor may have begun as mere misinformation or an annoying prank, it clearly lends itself to any number of unscrupulous schemes. The point is not to be alarmed, but to arm yourself with the facts so you won't be deceived. The point is also to refrain from deceiving others by ignorantly passing along false information. P.T. Barnum supposedly said, "There's a sucker born every minute." That doesn't mean you or I have to be one. Pass that on. For more information, see:
|
Explore Urban Legends