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The Better Business Bureau is urging Montana residents to beware of an online scam involving a former legitimate Billings business that is no longer operating.

The website involved is www.OutletFurniture.us, and it purports to be a clearance furniture liquidator that supposedly purchased items from auctions and clearance/liquidation sales for re-sale. This scam advertises on Craigslist and other online venues and maintains fake web sites.

Some customers have reported that while the company will allow you to pay with PayPal, what they are trying to get customers to do is buy a "green dot money pak" which you can get at WalMart, CVS, etc. When you get a green dot money pak, and go to pay, the company has you enter your activation code for your card, which means they now have access to the money loaded on that card, leaving you at risk for potential unauthorized transactions made against that card.

As of February 16, 2010, the Better Business Bureau confirmed that these web sites are spoofed scam sites of a legitimate group in Billings, MT that has gone out of business.

The website www.outletfurniture.us contains the same online content and pages as the out of business company's web site (www.outletfurniture.net) which has been spoofed to purport this online furniture selling scam.

The web site www.outletfurniture.us has been falsely registered using the name Mark Edwards with an Albany, WY address that does not exist.

The phone number displayed in the domain registration for this site goes to a legitimate business that has nothing to do with this scam. The legitimate business in WY stated that they have received calls asking for a Mark Edwards, too.

The domain registration for Clearance Furniture names a Tim Goddard as administrator, with a toll-free phone number as well as an address in Wyoming, even though the web site falsely states, "Our deposit is located in Billings, MT."

BBB urges caution when dealing with this company that basically asks you to order/pay upfront before calls and/or concerns may or may not be answered. BBB also urges caution dealing with a company such as this that has no physical address listed on its web site.

There are also several subjective posts displayed online from disgruntled customers voicing the opinion that this company is a scam and that it is actually operating out of the Ukraine.

If anyone believes they are a victim of this scam, they are urged to file a formal complaint with the FBI at www.ic3.gov and also file a police report regarding the possibility of ID Theft activity (depending on how much personal info has been compromised).

Victims should also be pro-active and file a complaint with whichever online venue they found the ad in. For instance, if it was Craigslist, file an abuse report with Craigslist's Abuse Dept.