Georgia White wishes she'd become suspicious sooner.

The owner of Boise At Its Best Flowers, 851 S. Vista Ave., White had seen scams before. About 10 years ago, she accepted a phone order to send a dozen roses and $100 to some people said to be visiting Boise for a wedding. Later, after the cash had been delivered, she learned that the credit card had been stolen.

This time, the scam was more sophisticated. A man e-mailed her store requesting 1,200 individually wrapped roses. Over several days, the customer and White e-mailed one another as he checked on the order. White checked his credit card; the bank said it was good. She charged the card for a $2,900 order and e-mailed the man to say he could pick up the flowers Thursday.

Thursday came, but the customer didn't. She e-mailed him again. He replied that his wife was pregnant and had gone into labor. He asked her to ship the flowers to an orphanage in Ghana. He told her which shipping company to use.

White knew then that she'd been conned. She called police and the Better Business Bureau, which put out a news release Thursday afternoon to let Valley businesses know a scam artist was at work. On Friday, the BBB put out a second release saying the same man was targeting printing companies. Any business that sells custom-made or perishable goods could be at risk, BBB said.

Scam artists "string the business owner along," said Dale Dixon, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Southwest Idaho and Eastern Oregon. "Once the product is amassed, the business owner is in the precarious situation of having to move the product. She feels compelled to follow through and ship it."

The scam would have worked had White followed the man's directions to wire cash to pay for the shipping charges to the phony shipping company and bill the charge to a stolen credit card. The scammer is outside the U.S., and once wired, the money would have been unrecoverable, Dixon said.

About six months ago, a scam similar to this week's led local banner makers to produce about $4,000 worth of "Jesus Loves You" banners, he said.

"There's really nothing law enforcement can do in a situation like this," he said.

White has 14 employees and has been in business since 1994. She said four-fifths of her orders are placed by credit card, mostly over the phone or the Internet. The BBB warns businesses like hers to know who they're dealing with, but White says that's sometimes not realistic. When a young man she doesn't know calls to order flowers for his fiancee, she sends them. Most of the time, things work out as they should.

The roses cost White about $1,500. She hopes to recover her money from Chase Card Services, the credit card division of JPMorgan Chase & Co., which she said approved the card the scammer used. But she doubts Chase will pay, because her own bank told her Chase did not know the card had been stolen.

Meanwhile, she was stuck with 1,200 roses. So Thursday afternoon and Friday, White and her staff gave away roses by the hundreds - to the Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center, to St. Luke's and Saint Alphonsus hospitals, to the Mountain States Tumor Institute, to wildland firefighters, to the BBB.

At least the community will benefit, White said.

"Flowers do something for people," she said.

David Staats: 377-6417