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Sean Krunich, KruMed - Stay Away

Joshua Glas

Sean Krunich, KruMed - Stay Away

June 26, 2015 11:34

All, please use extreme caution if contacted by Sean Krunich of KruMed. I will attempt to make this post as brief as possible, but it is a very long story with many details. If anyone would like additional details or documentation, please don't hesitate to contact me.

On 6/10, Sean contacted me inquiring whether I could purchase a new probe from Philips. Having done a little business with Sean in the past without incident I didn't think much of it. A day later Sean confirmed he received a purchase order from his customer and requested I order the part. The magnitude of the transaction hit me there as this part was costing me $25K. I asked Sean what payment arrangement would be like and he insisted this particular customer always pays him in 15-20 days.
As I said, so far I had no reason not to trust him so I ordered the part.

Red Flag #1: Sean requested I send the part to his house. That sounded a bit odd to me as I promised him I could blind ship on his behalf. He gave me some story about his dad (who technically owns the business) likes to test these parts before shipping as they've had some image quality issues in the past. He said they had an IE33 ultrasound they purchased for this purpose. A bit strange, but I suppose I've dealt with stranger...

Red Flag #2: Considering the large amount of the transaction I asked Sean if I could see a copy of the purchase order from his customer. I asked several times and he said he had a verbal order confirmation. Considering this was ultimately going to a
hospital and having dealt with many hospitals in my career, although I know this happens occasionally it is most definitely not the norm. I asked Sean if I could see an e-mail from his customer confirming the order that he could simply forward me. (Note: Forward means finding an e-mail and pressing forward then typing the e-mail address; you'll need that definition in a moment). Sean sent me an e-mail which I was copy and pasted from other e-mails (I found out later) and included an order confirmation from the alleged customer, asking for a serial number for benchmarking and giving a purchase order number. It was signed as follows (identity removed per request from alleged e-mail sender)

Thanks,
Matt XXXXX
CMRP
Director, Supply Chain
Procurement, MMIS
ViaChristie South Hospital
1 Mt Carmel Pl
Pittsburg KS 66762

(Big) Red Flag #3: As this was now appearing a bit out of the norm for me I did some basic detective work and searched for the name in the e-mail on LinkedIn. Turns out, the person who was the signatory in Sean's "forwarded" e-mail was not employed by this hospital in Kansas. He was actually employed by a hospital 40 minutes west of my office. I called the hospital and hunted this person down. He was kind enough to promptly call me back. I recounted the details thus far and he said this was not anything he had requested and recollected some details in dealing w/Sean a year prior and advised me against doing business with him.

Red Flag #4: I called Sean out on this and he came up with some excuse about his secretary copying and pasting together some e-mails so they could send me the "order". (Refer back to definition of forwarding above). He then said the hospital information was correct but it was to be sent to a Matt Swanson. I looked him up on LinkedIn and sure enough Matt worked at the hospital this part was allegedly going to. I felt a little better but advised Sean that I would only ship to the hospital but at
this point I wanted to speak with the engineer directly (as a representative of Sean's company) to confirm shipping details, etc. Sean provided me with his phone number. I called him and the details matched. Felt a little better again.

Although I'm feeling a bit better at this point, something was not sitting right with me... I looked up Matt Swanson's connections on LinkedIn and found some mutual connections. I called a friend of mine and asked if he knew Matt well. (From here on
out is where it all starts to fall apart). My friend said he know Matt, but not well. However, he did know Matt's boss and after filling him in on this story he said he would call Matt's boss on my behalf to see if this order was legitimate. Turns out Matt
Swanson's manager knew nothing about the order and advised my friend to call Matt. When confronted by my friend, Matt claimed ignorance on the deal. I now am thinking Sean provided me with a fake phone number for someone he knew who was
"acting". I asked my friend to forward me Matt Swanson's number so I could call him myself and see if he even knew who Sean was. Guess what... It was the same number I called earlier and was the same Matt I spoke with earlier. Turns out he was
in on this too!

I spoke with his manager and advised him what was going on. He appeared to be shocked. I then called Matt up myself and asked what on earth was going on. He claimed Sean called him and simply asked him to pick up a shipment. I told him the
implications of what this would have meant for me and that I was disgusted he would lie to me on the phone like that. VERY unprofessional and unethical.

I then called Sean back and reported all of my findings to him. He started backpedaling and making excuses as to how this was all still a legitimate attempt. Of course I don't believe a word he says. Philips/AllParts was kind enough to work with me on the restocking fee a little bit in consideration of the facts of this story and that the whole transaction was fraudulent. Kudos to their team over there and the people that helped me out. I really appreciate it!

I did send an invoice to Sean for the restocking fee, but I'm unlikely to see that. I'm just very sated by the fact that I did not ignore the red flags on this and did my diligence. It could have been much worse. Use EXTREME caution if you are contacted by this scammer. I would strongly advise you steer very clear. (Not as short as I would have liked to have kept it, but the details are important).

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