Anatomy of an audio scam

>> >> Buying speakers out of a van is no sound deal

by Michael Citrome

Two guys in a rented minivan are trolling downtown and the Plateau posing as delivery men. They want to sell you what they say are high-end studio monitors made by a company called Pro Audio. Anxious to get rid of them, they're ready to let them go for peanuts, less than a quarter of the retail price.

The twist is, these aren't some guys selling stolen goods. This is a sophisticated scam involving speakers that look expensive, made by a fictional company that sounds impressive. In reality, the speakers are of a bargain-basement variety, all done up in their Sunday best. These are the audio equivalents of the Tag Hauer you bought for $10 in Manhattan.

Jean Coulombe, a 22-year-old multimedia student, was approached when he left school, on his way to lunch at Place Dupuis. He got the hard sell from the men, who gave a spiel about the warehouse accidentally giving them twice the number of speakers ordered. They said they just wanted to sell them off and split the cash.

Claiming the speakers retail for $1,200 each, they produced a professional-looking spec sheet to prove it. They even showed him an order manifest to back up their delivery story. After some haggling, the initially skeptical Coulombe was convinced to buy a pair of the ersatz loudspeakers for $400.

Back at home, Coulombe looked up Pro Audio on the Web. What he found was a trail of scam reports around the world, in a lively discussion thread on audio-review site, www.speakermania.com. "I knew I got scammed and I got pretty pissed off," says Coulombe. Hoping to recoup some of his investment, Coulombe took the speakers to a music pawn shop on Jean-Talon. "The guy asked, 'Did you buy those speakers from two guys in a van?'" Coulombe recounts. "I sold them for $60 for both."

The scammers did give Coulombe a phone number. The number connects to Global Audio Network, a Ville St-Laurent company that claims to be the distributor for the Pro Audio line. A Global Audio Network representative refused to comment, other than to say that a salesman would call back.

Local speaker guru Keith Gariepy is no stranger to this scam. Manning the decks at audiophile-haven Audioshop on de la Montagne, Gariepy has had customers bring up Pro Audio speakers before. "People would call us and say, 'Have you ever heard of Pro Audio?'--and we'd say, 'No,'" says Gariepy. "Then it was either, 'I bought it,' or 'A friend bought it.' They'd eventually say something like, 'I bought them off a guy in a van.'"

Gariepy has tested the speakers, and finds them sub-par. "The pair I examined seemed to be fairly cheaply made. A pair of speakers from Radio Shack would be comparable." The scam speakers have even turned up on eBay.com, preying on unsuspecting bidders with starting prices of $500 or more.

Their pitch may be seductive, and the speakers certainly look good, but no matter what price you pay for those boxes, you're getting ripped off. "Honestly, I wouldn't pay $100 for them, that's for sure," says Gariepy. "To get the kind of performance they're stating, you'd have to spend at least $1,000."