Stephen Mejias

Today I received an e-mail from one of my favorite hi-fi sales managers. These are the guys who help me collect pricing and dealer data, images to accompany our reviews, and other behind-the-scenes stuff.

This particular e-mail was out of the ordinary. It had nothing to do with any of those things. It went:

I just received an e-mail request for a review sample. Since I am not familiar with this gentleman, and I am not aware of an Australian edition of Stereophile, I thought I would run it by you for authenticity before I responded to him.

So, you see, there's this dude — David Carpenter — posing as "Review Officer 1" of our Australian offices, requesting review samples from hi-end companies. Totally bogus. We don't have an Australian office, and we've never heard of David Carpenter.

I don't think I like him very much. What was especially interesting and upsetting to me was that his e-mail was worded very much like one of my own requests for artwork or pricing info. As if he'd somehow gotten a hold of my handy work and recreated it for his own evil scheming.

Well, David Carpenter, you're foiled. Zoiks!