The Nash Finch stores Avanza, Food Bonanza and Wholesale Food Outlets add the 10 percent charge to food at the register and specialize in serving Hispanics, according to store workers.

However, the Nash Finch stores Sun Mart Foods, Econo Foods, Family Fresh Market, Pick N Save and Prairie Market stores do not charge extra at the register and do not cater to Hispanics, according to the store workers.

"Jim," a store manager, told the news station that the fee is to offset other costs, but it's clear that the 10% charge is at least partly a way to offer steeper "discounts" throughout the store that are effectively removed when you pay.

Nash Finch denies it's doing anything skeevy or illegal with its unclear pricing, but 9News points out their attempt at full disclosure is confusingly worded, perhaps deliberately so:

"The 'shelf-plus' pricing program is only used in certain store formats. These stores tend to be located where consumers are more price-conscious, as compared to our more conventional supermarkets," said Brian Numainville, Public Relations for Nash Finch Company. "The pricing policy is explained, not just in English, but also in Spanish, so that no customer is caught unaware at the cash register."

The stores do advertise that they are going to add a 10 percent fee in signs posted across the store, on the store shelves below the price of a food item on the store shelf and in flyers and circulars. However, the wording is confusing to many. For example, the flyers read, "A great way to save - Plus 10 % at the Register."

What do you think—is this an acceptable way to price groceries? In a series of questions Nash Finch answered for 9News' story, they claim that they're not the only chain to do this, and that it's not just Hispanic markets. Here's their final justifaction for the practice:

Question 9: Wouldn’t it be more honest/up front to just add 10 percent to the price of all of the products—so that people can see the actual price on the shelf and on the sticker?

Answer: The grocery industry is extremely competitive. Stores vie for customers. Customer loyalty is highly valued. Given the need to attract and retain customers, our stores cannot afford to alienate its customers by charging unexplained fees or unanticipated mark-ups. Our pricing is attracting customers—rather than losing them—demonstrating that the pricing policy is in fact fair, obvious, and well-understood by our shoppers.

"Some grocery stores add 10 percent fee" [9News.com] (Thanks to Randy!)

According to the article, Richardson is likely in violation of a state law that prohibits unfair sales practices, as well as state laws "prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race or national origin in places of public accommodation." Even the group that Richardson claims membership in—Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement (RIILE)—is trying to distance itself from Richardson:

"There's no way I can defend what he did. It definitely isn't the policy of RIILE to go around and use your RIILE card to intimidate people," said Gorman in a phone interview. "That's not something that RIILE would promote ... to make citizen's arrest."

Genao said he is still upset over the encounter, which he called "loud in tone." Richardson called it "a discussion."

"I told [Richardson] I'm a U.S. citizen by choice, whereas he was just born here," said Genao. "I have every right to be here. I told him his behavior was shameful. And he went on to say that a lot of these illegal immigrants are criminals and we have to stop them, and he said he did this for his country — because it's going downhill, because of all these illegal immigrants.

"What [Richardson] should have done was say, 'Thank you for shopping with me.' That's all he had to do."

(Thanks to ElizabethD!)

"Store owner asks to see shoppers' Social Security cards" [The Providence Journal]

To date, we've seen reports of Spanish calls trying to finangle people's social security info, in Spanish, coming from these phone numbers: 401-200-9876, 305-503-8068, 305-503-8066, 301-392-8219, 661-375-3050, 954-678-8026, 678-310-5678, 786-718-9058, 480-929-4842, 785-718-9058, 786-879-6669, 305-371-7266, 408-822-1645, 305-256-4287, and 978-228-0011.

What a nuisance. If anyone ever grows the cojones to report this to the cops, someone outta tie these Frito Banditos up in a pinata. After all the treats are removed from their bellies, we can have a Mexican hat dance party. Then the pummeled giblets can be laid to dry in the sun with the fibers from the rope pressed in. The resultant blanket will make for a cozy siesta sheet. Ole!

Previously: Calls From a Stranger thread.

We just received a call from Ben who is a sort of switch conductor over at Metro PCS, which owns the number 954-678-8026 on which these Spanish spam calls were delivered.

Ben gives us the straight dope... after the jump...

Metro PCS is a pre-paid cellphone program which doesn't require customers to give up their name or address in order to enroll.

At its peak, there were over 100 calls per minute being returned to the number. The scammers call up people and tell them they've won a free phone and they just need their social security number to confirm the prize. With a social security number, there's a wide array of identity theft based crimes they could conduct. These criminals only wanted to talk to live people. The Spanish message was part of the end call script on their autodialer.

Switch conductor Ben said the scammers have an autodialer hooked up to hundreds of lines, dialing phone numbers at random. This is the fifth number MetroPCS shut down in a month.

Ben says they killed the account last Thursday at 3pm. They noticed a suspcious amount of returned calls tying up the routers and shut down the number shortly thereafter. As the calls don't actually go through their cellphone network, and only use the number, there's nothing more they can do.

The scammers sign up for Metro PCS just to get a phone number, which they then plug into the Primary Rate Interface or PRI, the technical name for Caller ID data. Since about 10 years ago, the PRI has been programmable from the user side. The intent was for businesses to make individual's extension numbers viewable when calling out from the business. However, this also makes it easy to spoof a number.

The name George Martinez is most likely a fake name. All the calls have been traced back to addresses up and down Bickell avenue in Ft. Lauderdale Florida, however, these are nearly undoubtedly fake addresses as well.

If they could identify the scammer by name and address, MetroPCS would prosecute.

Should you receive unwanted marketing calls, no matter how many or how frequently, report it to the police. Even one is illegal. Secondly, report it to your cellphone company. As always, look a gift horse in the mouth and never give personal information over the phone.

Recently, Verizon has started a campaign of suing illegal Florida telemarketers.

Previously: Calls From a Stranger thread.

Reader Diego tells us he thinks the voice has a South American accent, either Argentian or Chilean. The message says, as Adam writes, "usted ha agotado todas las opcions, esta llamada ser desconectada. Gracias."

Which in english means, "You have exhausted all options, this call will be disconnected. Thank you."

So... it's not a marketing pitch as we thought. However, it's still harassing. We advise any people who are bothered by it to file a police report. We may bust out some of our sleuthing tools and try to figure out who George Martinez is, the person to whom this phone number is registered. We'll get to that right after we get this darn egg off our face.

Previously: Calls From a Stranger thread

UPDATE: Diego may have an explanation for the message, "I have some experience with IVR equipment," he writes. " I used to work in telecom before moving to advertising. I suspect someone didn't program the options correctly so it's skipping to the "end call" script before running the options menu. Could be worse, if they had left it stuck in a loop."

Don't these people notice their spam machine isn't generating any dinero? Direct marketers should obsess over all their metrics. At least do us the honor of using your illegal tools correctly. We're not sure whom we loathe more, unethical marketers or marketers with poor form.

Listen here.

It's less than 10 seconds, is in Spanish and is quite muffled. Can anyone translate? Also, for anyone else who's got calls from this number, does this sound like the same message?

It's so short and doesn't sound like a normal pitch... what if it's like, "Hi, remember to have a "hoppy" Easter, thank you!"

Previously: Calls From a Stranger thread

Sorry if our quest for information seems rapacious but it really got our whistle wet.

This may the only time where we've ever wished we were more of a victim, then we could exact revenge by filing a police report and then telling ourselves about it.

Previously: Calls From a Stranger tag.

UPDATE: We have corroboration for the name. Jordan writes, "Hey, just to confirm, I pulled up the phone number from the "Calls From a Stranger" using a database our company employs for skip tracing purposes and also got similar results:

(954) 678-8026
Name: MARTINEZ GORGE
Status: ACTIVE NUMBER

The information provided by the company is updated on a daily basis."

We just called the Ft. Lauderdale police at (954) 828-5700, pressing 6 to report a crime. We told the officer that we wanted to report some "harrassing phone calls." After they got over the initial hump that it wasn't taking place at an address, we weren't actually victims and we didn't live in Ft. Lauderdale, they took down our information and said an officer will call us back.

Not 20 minutes later, an officer did. We learned that you if you've been called by 954-678-8026, you need to call your police station for them to take the report. The locality of where the call was received has jurisdiction.

In the meantime, we're working with one of readers to get the messages extracted from his phone. We'll try and get that converted and uploaded so we can all partake in the joy. Hopefully, then too someone out there is fluent in Spanish and will translate its secrets.

UPDATE: Does anyone know how to extract messages from a T-Mobile phone? We need an easy way to get these messages from the handset to the Internet, while preserving as much of the fidelity as possible. The messages are said to already to be "garbled" and of "poor quality."

UPDATE: Read how to get messages from your cellphone onto your computer.

We called MetroPCS (1-888-863-8768, press #, 4, 3). We asked if they would shut the number down. The Metro PCS Terms of Service forbid using their system for telemarketing. Supervisor Bonnie says that she doesn't even see the phone number as being active in their system.

Yet the calls continue. Very mysterious.

The plot thickens, after the jump...

When asked if it was possible for someone to "spoof" a phone number, she said she was unaware of any such technology.

She took down all our info and the offending number and said she would send a request to corporate and have them investigate the matter. She also advised us to call 1-888-382-1222 press 4, which is the National Do Not Call registry. However, to file a complaint with this division of the FCC, one needs to have registered their phone number 30 days prior. You can also do the same thing at donotcall.gov.

So, here's what we suggest. 1) If you've registered your number with the donotcall registry at least 30 days ago, go to the website and claim these 954-678-8026 called you. Or, you can send us your number and we'll do it for you. Shades of gray? We don't care, these creeps need to get their pinatas busted.

In the meantime, we await to see if MetroPCS does anything about the problem. We'll check back in a week or half or so with Bonny and see if she gets a response from corporate.

Previously: Calls From a Stranger

As you may recall, this number has been auto-dialing people up and leaving unsolicited voice mails that make some kind of marketing pitch in Spanish. We need to get a recording of this.

To receive another call today, well that is a surprise. We thought they were disconnected by 7:30 EST yesterday. At least, that's what the message "MSL03, your number cannot be completed as dialed, please check the number and dial again" lead us to believe? Are they spoofing the message?

Ben asks, "So, how would I stop these guys from calling me again? They've been doing it for the past few months, and I don't think my Spanish is going to get any better."

Check our previous post for ideas on how we can stop these scofflaws. We'll be dusting off that Dick Tracy jacket , after all, which is great because it's Spring and a wonderful time to bust out those day-glo yellows hiding in the closet.

Our first step will be to reverse look up the phone number and complain to the carrier. Hopefully we can also discover the address where the calls are originating from and trace the owner's identity.

Previously: Calls From a Stranger

We were gonna look up 954-678-8026, whose been leaving unsolicited marketing pitches in Spanish on people's phones, most likely using an auto-dialer, and shut them down.

As of 7:15 pm EST, calling that number get a disconnected message. The phone-spammers have already been stopped. Rats, we were just about to dust off the ol' Dick Tracy trench coat and do some sleuthing.

However, we bet they're going to strike again. Be on the watch and let us know. We'd hate for all these venetian blinds and smoky haze we just bought to go to waste.

Read more: Crooks - Trade your Gun or Knife for a Phone

Previously: Calls From a Stranger

He writes:

"Today, I had a call from 1-954-678-8026 which was another muffled Spanish recorded message...and a failed call from 1-305-503-8068 which, when called back, led me to a Spanish-language menu system (pressing 9 got me to a Spanish-speaking operator...but, I ended the call). Both of these numbers seem to originate in Florida (305 is the Miami area and 954 is Broward County)."

Several other bloggers have noted the phenomenon recently. A couple of people found Clampants blog by searching for the same phone numbers and reported they also received the calls.

"No clue what this is," writes Clampants. "If it's some sort of scam, well, the language barrier is certainly hindering the scam attempts."

Would any Spanish speakers in the audience like to give call the numbers up and report back what's going on? What kind of company are they, what are they selling, why are they leaving mass Spanish messages?

UPDATE: We just called the numbers and there's a busy/disconnected pulsing tone.

UPDATE: These are autodialers using pre-recorded solicitation messages. It is illegal. If you receive one of these calls, enter the area code and prefix here at Telcodata.US. Complain to the customer service of the provider listed. They will shut the unsolicited phone spammer down.

UPDATE: Verizon sues some telemarketer using the same tactics. And here's one man's story of how he successfully sued a telemarketer who called him at 5 in the morning. He also provides a slew of resources for tracking down phone solicitors.