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The CEI Group, Inc. (CEI) will offer its accident, risk and safety management services to European markets, due to increased demand from CEI's current customers with global fleets.

CEI's overseas operations are slated to get underway in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Germany and France during the second half of 2004.

John F. Wysseier, named managing director for Europe, is charged with the responsibility of overseeing the launch, cultivating international accounts, and developing the servicing, technology, and supply chain platforms to support the European business.

Wayne Smolda, founder and CEO of CEI has been engaged in field work throughout Europe during the past year and will continue to provide leadership and insight for the creation of the CEI's global business.

The multi-step expansion strategy commenced early in 2003 with extensive market research and field investigations by Wysseier and Smolda to understand the unique needs and expectations of European fleet customers.

Wysseier began his assignment at CEI in the U.S. several years ago and has been a key leader in supporting the expansion of the company's North American operations, which have doubled in scope and size every three years since 1998.

As the first accident management company to offer services on two continents, CEI plans to continue its growth by product line, market segments and geographically into other international regions including Southeast Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Smolda said, "We are now expanding to two continents and will deploy one global database platform to improve international sourcing decision making for our customers."

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GMAC Insurance and OnStar are partnering to create new insurance products for their joint customers. Under the collaboration, GMAC Insurance will utilize the capabilities of OnStar's in-vehicle safety and security system to offer OnStar subscribers insurance products and significant premium discounts.

"We're extremely excited to be able to announce a great new set of additional benefits that will now be available to OnStar subscribers as a result of our partnership with GMAC Insurance," said OnStar President Chet Huber. "We're proud of the level of service OnStar delivers to its 2.5 million subscribers," said Huber "and having those benefits recognized by the insurance industry, with tangible savings for our customers, is a great next step."

This announcement is another step in the growing partnership between OnStar and GMAC Insurance according to Gary Kusumi, president of GMAC Insurance Personal Lines. "There are synergies among our services that naturally give rise to new products and services that empower consumers," said Kusumi. "This type of innovation arises from the power of two best-of-breed players working together with consumers in mind. There will be additional innovations from this partnership."

The new evolving GMAC Insurance products include the following:

• OnStar Subscriber Discount - GMAC Insurance will begin rolling out a special subscriber discount for OnStar customers in several states, with plans for national expansion.
• Mileage-Based Insurance - GMAC Insurance and OnStar will pilot a new mileage-based consumer insurance concept. The program will offer discounts to eligible subscribers in three states as part of a test program to validate feasibility and customer appeal. With the customer's permission, OnStar will verify mileage on the vehicle twice during the policy period. The lower the vehicle mileage, the more significant the discount.

OnStar is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors Corp.

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While the nation's unemployment rate might not be dropping dramatically, one group that seems to have plenty of "work" are scam-artists. And shop owners who have fallen victim - or avoided a close-call with a scam - are telling their stories to help keep others from getting burned.

A shop in Portland, Ore., for example, recently accepted not one but two phony money orders last month, resulting in a loss of nearly $2,000.

Ron Tanner, owner of Tanner's Automotive, said the two men he believes were behind the fraud have been arrested, though the shop is not likely to receive any restitution.

"But if I can keep one other person, one other colleague, from getting burned, then that's my objective," Tanner said.

The incident began when a customer had a vehicle towed to one of Tanner's two automotive repair shops. The service writer and manager of the shop accepted a $700 money order for the work on the vehicle.

"My employee was under the impression, as I was, that all money orders have to be good because you have to pay cash for them," Tanner said.

Three or four days later, the same customer brought in another vehicle, a pick-up, for repair, this time paying with a $1,271 money order. Several days after both vehicles had been returned to the customer, Tanner's bank returned the money orders as invalid. By calling the phone number for the business where the money orders were supposedly issued, Tanner learned they were counterfeit; the woman he talked to him told him the money orders he accepted weren't even the same size as the money orders that business sells.

He filed a police report, but also decided to do some checking on his own. He found out from the tow company where they had picked up the first vehicle they had towed to the shop, and went to that location.

"No one was home, but the place looked like a chop shop, a lot of fenders and doors and tailgates of pickups and that sort of stuff," Tanner said. "The vehicles I'd worked on were not there. But there was a bunch of equipment and a compressor."

He then got a call from the woman he'd spoken to about the money orders, who said she'd been called by another business that also had received a similar fake money order. Tanner called that company and found out they'd sold a welder and compressor to a man who gave them a bogus $1,400 money order - and drove off with the equipment in the pick-up Tanner's shop had repaired.

Tanner told that company where they could find their compressor - and they worked with Clackamas County authorities to get their equipment back and have one of the residents of the home arrested. Portland police later stopped the pick-up - which had expired out-of-state plates - Tanner had worked on, and arrested the driver, who Tanner says is the customer who brought both vehicles to his shop.

Tanner has filed a felony complaint.

"I saw the rap sheet on the one guy was six or seven pages long," he said. "But talking with the district attorney and others, there's no way I'll get any restitution. The other guy got his equipment back, but there's no help for me."

Tanner said the fraud could have been avoided if the shop had done a better job of verifying the identification of the customer and matching it to the money order and vehicle registration. Between the fake names, addresses, signatures and phone numbers given by the customer and on the money order, something should have raised a red flag, he said.

"I definitely have new policies now," he said.

He said his managers now know that any type of check or money order needs to be validated before a vehicle is released. If something doesn't seem right, he said, shops should ask the customer for cash, driving the customer to the bank, if necessary.

"Three or four years ago, this wouldn't have been such a big deal," Tanner said. "Two thousand dollars is still $2,000, but with the economy the way it is now, with a lot shops hurting and closing up...It's a real struggle."

Another Oregon shop owner has become very knowledgeable about a new twist on a scam often called the "Nigerian money transfer scheme." Yet all he wanted to do was sell his 1967 Chevelle.

Bob Trout, the owner of Pilot Butte Auto Repair in Bend, Ore., said he is glad he did not fall for the scam, but now wants to see that no one else gets as close to losing $6,000 as he did.

"Everybody works hard for their money, and I'd hate to see somebody like this try to scam it from people," Trout said.

Last fall, Trout decided he had one too many project vehicles and decided to sell the Chevelle. He placed an ad on a Chevelle website, and about four weeks later received an email from someone claiming to be a broker with an interested buyer.

"According to the email, the way the transaction would work is the buyer would send me a cashier's check for $9,800," Trout said. "The price of the car was $3,500. After I deposited the cashier's check, I was to take my $3,500, and then Western Union him the balance, and they would arrange for shipping once I gave consent for the car to be picked up."

The odd arrangement raised a number of red flags for Trout.

"First, a broker generally stays in the middle and doesn't put you or the buyer in direct contact with one another," Trout said. "The buyer would write the broker a check, and he'd write me a check and stay in the middle of the transaction. I started to wonder: Why is this broker putting me in direct contact with the buyer?"

Trout also thought it was odd that a buyer supposedly in the United Kingdom would pay $9,800 to have a vehicle that doesn't even run shipped overseas.

"Once they got it over there, where are they going to get parts to fix it?" Trout said.

He was having lunch with his banker that day, and decided to tell her about the proposed transaction.

"She about fell out of her chair," Trout said. "She actually had a news article about this same scam with someone with a Cadillac who unfortunately followed through with the transaction, wired off the money, and two weeks later got a call from the bank saying that the cashier's check he'd deposited was a fraud and no good."

Though he'd already decided not to follow through with the scheme, Trout played along with the "broker," and sure enough, received a cashier's check via Federal Express. He showed it to his banker who took a photocopy of it and said that alone convinced her it was likely a fake.

"She said that when you photocopy 99.9 percent of cashier's checks, the word 'void' appears on the copy," Trout said. "This one didn't do that."

Trout did call the Florida credit union on which the check was drawn, and was told they receive an average of five to 10 similar calls a day about such scams.

Given the relatively small dollar amount involved and the fact that the perpetrators are generally located outside the country, most law enforcement officials don't pursue such scammers, Trout said he's been told. He also checked the website where he initially placed the ad, and after some searching, eventually found a small box with a scam alert, showing a dozen or more people who'd had a similar experience, some of whom had actually lost money.

"But I just might frame this check, because really who scammed who here?" Trout says. "It cost him more to FedEx this check than I have into this."

Trout subsequently received an email that helped him understand how this "Nigerian money transfer scheme" got its name. The scammer sends an email - or in years past, an airmail letter - from Nigeria or other country asking the potential victim to accept a cashier's check and wire back a smaller amount.

Next-day availability of funds for cashier's checks deposited in a bank account is mandated by federal law, Susan Stawick of the Federal Reserve Board said.

"But if the deposit does not clear, we have the right to charge back the account for any credit we have given," she said.

So as one police detective suggests, "If you're asking for $5,000 and someone offers you $15,000, you better make sure you have the $5,000 before you give back the $10,000."