By Gretchen Teske
Source Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus, Ill.
When Davenport police corporal Dave Morse took a report of a woman being scammed out of thousands of dollars for a custom table, he knew from the start the chances of getting the money back were slim.
But in this case, for every bad actor, there was a good one waiting in the wings.
It was February 2024 when Teresa, who requested to go only by her first name, was scrolling through Facebook and came across videos by Blacktail Studio. The owner, Cam Anderson, is a woodworker based in Portland, Oregon, who handcrafts extremely detailed tables and other projects.
“It's as simple as I can make it. Just a channel for people to zone out and watch something come together," said Anderson, who usually charges about $10,000 for an average dining table, but his prices go up depending on the complexity.
The videos are simple, but show the step-by-step process of creating the piece, drawing in viewers around the world, Teresa included. Her brother had been a woodworker when he was alive and she was drawn in by the craftsmanship and prestige.
After commenting on a few of the videos, Teresa received a reply from who she thought was the studio owner, letting her know she'd won a coffee table and a few other things. She just needed to pay for shipping.
Except, the comment wasn't from Blacktail Studio at all. It came from Blacktail Studios, an account created by scammers and changed so minimally, with an added "s" on the end of the name, that Teresa didn't even notice.
But the tale doesn't end there. It was just the start of a months long scamming nightmare that turned out to have an ending she could only dream of.
The scam begins
The website Teresa was sent to in order to fill out her shipping information for her table looked completely legitimate. That's because it almost was. The scammers cloned the real Blacktail Studio website and created a second version under the scam account.
Shortly after filling out her information and sending in the money required for shipping, things escalated beyond control. She was told "Cam" had been arrested and she needed to pay for him to be released so he could finish the table, that she needed to send more money for supplies and other requests for financial support.
She complied at first, she admitted, but as the cost soared she finally sent a message telling them she was done sending money and hoping for the coffee table after all.
"Then I get this message that Cam Anderson wants to talk to you on WhatsApp," she said.
A communication app, WhatsApp allows for people to send messages for free, similar to texting, and is especially popular in foreign countries. It is also, unfortunately, common for scammers to use as well.
But Teresa didn't know that, and was already out a few thousand dollars, so she went ahead with downloading the app and messaging there. To her surprise, she was sent a video that appeared to show Cam in his studio, talking to Teresa and assuring her this was no scam, and that he was actively working on a dining table for her instead of the coffee table they'd originally discussed.
But, the video wasn't Anderson at all and instead an artificial rendering of him, speaking directly to Teresa with dialogue provided by the scammers. Known as a deepfake, the artificial image is made using an image of the real person, but manipulating their voice and words.
The video was well done, and with money already poured into this table, Teresa stuck with who she believed to be Anderson, until the lies snowballed once again. Soon after the video, she was told he was living in his car and needed money, something had happened with his wife, and eventually that the truck with the table in it was confiscated by police.
If she didn't pay to have the truck released, the scammers told her, they'd have her arrested. By this time, the events that started in February had now stretched into summer and Teresa was fed up.
She contacted the Davenport Police Department and explained the entire story to Corporal Dave Morse, who finally got her the answers she was seeking. And a whole lot more.
An investigation ensues
Morse first met with Teresa about the scam in August 2024. He'd just left the detective bureau and was working as a station supervisor when they met.
"I knew the case wouldn't go anywhere with the detective bureau, so I figured I was on light duty, I'd just had surgery, so I'd just work on it while I was at the station," he said.
From the jump, Morse smelled a rat when Teresa explained the story. He got to work immediately and found the real Blacktail Studio, contacting the owner to make sure Teresa wasn't talking with him after all.
Anderson confirmed that it was not him, and that these scams were a dime a dozen on his page. Morse asked Teresa a few more questions and immediately got a feeling of dread, knowing she was a victim of a drawn out and complicated scam that was well outside of his jurisdiction.
"I knew at the beginning the money was going overseas, just by how she told me she made the payments and how all the contact was," he said.
The payments were made through third party apps like CashApp and the phone numbers were internet based, which means they could have been created from anywhere in the world. The next red flag was the constant requests for more money.
The scammers wanted more cash for everything from glue to screws to epoxy for the table and eventually told her it was shipped, but had been seized by customs and she'd need to pay even more to get it out.
"Well, the company is in the United States," Morse said. "It's not going to go through customs. But they told her it was in Chicago at a storage facility and actually contacted her, spoofed the number from the storage facility, and contacted her."
Morse called the facility, who denied they held any property for the Chicago Police Department or for U.S. Customs. Soon after, Teresa received an email from the alleged police department that was holding her table.
"Well, of course, I get online to Google the police department and it's a small suburb area outside of Chicago, and come to find out, six months prior to that they'd been taken over by the sheriff's department," he said. "So they no longer even had a police department."
At this point, Morse said, he realized all the money was going overseas and he had to assume the "bad actors were also overseas." Which also meant, there wasn't going to be a way to charge them.
Morse knew he couldn't get back the $17,000 Teresa had already spent on the table, but he did have one more trick up his sleeve.
"Early in the investigation, I had reached out to Cam directly, and he and I had begun talking about what was going on," Morse said.
It all comes together
After learning about the scam in August 2024, Anderson started thinking about the woman in Iowa who thought she was receiving a table from him. As part of his work, he makes informational videos not only about woodworking but about being aware of scammers and people trying to take advantage of others.
It stayed with him for months and in October, he decided he could both make an educational video to raise awareness and do something nice for a stranger. He called Morse back and offered to make Teresa the table for free, but he wanted it to be a surprise.
The pair worked together in secret, Morse being the inside man who figured out the dimensions and style of the table Teresa was after and Anderson at his studio in Portland, putting together the table she'd been wanting for months.
Anderson said it's not uncommon for him to see comments on his videos from pages pretending to be him. They usually say the commenter has been selected as a winner and if they just contact him through WhatsApp, they can have the table they won if they only pay for shipping.
Just like they did with Teresa.
In between working on the physical table, Anderson wanted to work on the educational side of the video. He scrolled down on one of his recent posts and found a commenter pretending to be him.
Anderson ended up emailing the contact listed and baited the scammers, saying his wife was contacted about them winning a table. The scammers were quick to assure him she had and they'd be happy to send it off, he said.
But Anderson wasn't going to let them off that easy.
"I ended up engaging with this guy for almost three months," he said.
Every time they asked for more money, Anderson fired back with uncertainty. He asked for multiple changes to the table and tried every trick he could think of to frustrate them and eventually was sent the same deepfake video Teresa was.
He can't be for sure, he said, but he's got a good feeling the scammers he was talking to are the same ones who contacted Teresa, who was still being asked for money just days before Anderson finished the surprise.
Once it came time to ship, he contacted Morse, who was able to find a local company to ship the table for free. Anderson booked a plane ticket to Davenport and found himself in the Davenport Police Station in January 2025.
Morse called up Teresa and told her she was needed at the station to fill out some paperwork, and she obliged, hoping they'd at least found out who the scammers were. Instead, she was shown to an interview room where she sat with Morse, and another man she didn't recognize.
The pair talked her through the entire process and what they had each been able to gather about the scam, then showed her the same deepfake video she received months before.
"Then I went, 'You're the real Cam!'" she said, referencing the man she didn't initially recognize.
Anderson told her about his own process with the scammers and led her to the community room of the police station where he presented her with the table she'd been after all along, completely free of charge.
All three admitted to tears that day, with a sense of relief washing over them. Anderson said it felt good to be able to do something nice for a stranger, and Morse said it felt good to put a happy ending on an otherwise very negative story.
But Teresa's emotions were ones of joy and gratitude, she said. She knew the money was gone and had accepted her fate. Receiving the table after all, she said, restored her faith a little bit.
"It was beyond. You don't think people are that good, but there's good people," she said of Anderson. "He didn't have to do that."
Teresa now has a new table to dine on, and in Morse, a friend for life, she said. In her eyes, he's the hero of this story.
"I'll never be able to thank him enough for doing that," she said.
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