Maybe related to this?

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01604950310470019/full/html
"A new flavor of spam: solicitation received as a patron book request"



Nancy B. Grant
Maine Balsam Libraries Consortium President
Retired LMS, NBCT
Dover-Foxcroft, Maine
207-564-3098
[log in to unmask]



On Mon, May 9, 2022 at 11:18 AM Jean Pauly <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> We've gotten a couple of questionable Book Requests through our website
> form in the past few weeks.The first request was for a book called Bidet,
> and the second was for a book about Covid.  In the comments of both
> requests they mention that Covid cases in Maine are "skyrocketing."  The
> contact information varies.  One claimed to be from the "Maine Hospice
> Association," and the other claimed to be "Masjid Omar Al-Farooq," (which
> is a mosque in Canada).  The contact information was correct for each
> organization, down to the phone number.  An interesting tidbit is that they
> consistently list their library barcode as 23333210210210 (which is not in
> our system.) Before we noticed the trend, I responded to the first request
> (basically asking for more information.) and Maine Hospice just called back
> to let us know that it was definitely not from them.
>
>
> I guess this is just a heads up- if you find you are getting suspicious
> requests, do a little research to confirm legitimacy.  I don't know why
> anyone would do this; has anyone else noticed this happening?
>
>
> Jean
>
>
>
> Jean Frances Pauly
> she/her
> Circulation Assistant
> Ellsworth Public Library
> Ellsworth, ME
> 207-667-6363
>