Scams...

[bankworking]

Oooh. Working in a bank, I bet you've seen the fallout from a lot of these scams. Do your customers try to fight you if you try to tell them it's a scam? Or try to blame you when they lose their money?

"It HAD to be good, otherwise why would you have cashed it!"

"Why didn't you tell me the check was bad!"

--We try so hard to ask questions about unusual deposits, something customers can get extremely offended by, but do you know how many checks we see in a day?


"What do you mean I owe you $3000 for a returned check? The hold on the check was released, so it was good!"

--Another little tip... legally banks have maximum hold limits. 5 business days for a check under $5000, unless we have reason to suspect it is a bad check (in which case we will try not to deposit it at all). Scam checks are generally designed with very distant routing numbers that will sometimes keep the check bouncing around the system until after the set hold release date. Some checks have taken over a month before we get back word that they are no good.

[Dreamstalker]

A family friend almost fell victim to one of those. He was selling a $300 couch on Craigslist, buyer from another state sent him a suspect-looking cashier's check for $3000

Wisely, he called the bank that the check was allegedly drawn on; they confirmed that not only had they not issued a cashier's check for that amount on the date printed on the check, the account didn't exist.

This was sometime last fall; he still has the check. I tried to get him to turn it in to the Secret Service/Treasury Dept, but I'm pretty sure it's too late by now.

[pssorens]

Had a friend get one of those fake cashiers checks, It wasn't even drawn on a bank, it was drawn on a ... wait for it ... HOSPITAL????

[caitsith2]

One thing you should be aware of, if calling the alleged issuing bank on suspect check, don't use the phone number on that check, instead, look up the phone number. The reason for that, is given that if it is a scammer, they may have altered the phone number to go to someone that WILL say the check is good even if it is not.

[Dreamstalker]

He looked the number up online...as expected, the number on the bank's website and the number on the check did not match.

pssorens, back in the forties, there was a RI bank called Hospital Trust; they still exist albeit absorbed into BankBoston now and I wouldn't think anything drawn on the Hospital Trust name would be any good anymore.. This is the only one I know of with "Hospital" in the name however.

[friendofjimmyk]

I signed up for some magazines and did i get them?

I had something similar to this one. They called me and said they wanted to give me three subscriptions to magazines for the price of one. I thought, "okay, I like to read". So, we get through my choices, we get to where to send them and then I get transferred to a supervisor to confirm my order. Once at the "supervisor", they proceed to ask me for my credit card information. I tell them "no...bill me" and they did not like that. I told them that there would be no subscriptions for me. The woman begins to argue with me. I stood firm and told her that I didn't care what she had to say, I was not going to give her my information over the phone because I've had bad luck before (not really...but who cared if I told the truth or not). She literally started yelling at me over the phone. She said something like, "Well then! How did you expect to pay for these magazines if you didn't want to give information over the phone!?!?!" I said, "bill me". She just continued on in her rant and over top of her ranting, I stated, "this conversation is over." and hung up.

[Racket_Man]

my Ex Wife actually fell for on of those friend-over-the-internet here is a check cash it for me type of scams. This was after we had split up.

Her "friend" sent her what appeared to be a legitimate Barclays (sp) Bank international moneyorder for 3000 UK pounds (or some large sum like that) and the large amount will be significant later.

at first she wanted me to deposit it in my checking account. given some of her "internet friends" at the time I said NO FRIGGIN WAY, so she put it into her account and sat on it. I tried to contact Barclays with the intent on finding out if this so called money order was legit, but they would not deal with me even though I suspected a fraudulent or stolen check.

the funny thing was the reason for not dealing with me was because I was not at CUSTOMER of thiers. and here I thought they might want to know about people trying to use their company for a scam or to to be informed about stolen check/moneyorders.

4 week later the Ex's bank informs her that the money order bounced and she was now out about $300US because of a change in the exchange rate between the date of deposit and the date of bounce

[Samaliel]

I keep getting lottery winnings from the UK, I've never been to the UK. I've also had a European one, Russian one, and for some reason the UN wants to give me money. I don't remember any more why the UN wants to give me money.

I live in France and my mom recently received two of those scams. First one from the U.S.A., second one from Canada.

Both were slightly less obvious than the usual "send us money back" scam : instead, we were supposed to pay a fee to enter the "contest" or "lottery" - nothing big : 20€ for the first one and 30€ for the second one.

However, what ticked us off at first, then made us all laugh to no end was the redundancy of either letter. They kept repeating the same thing over and over again, in so many different ways that the only possible variations left were haiku or Yoda syntax.



The first one, from the U.S., was supposedly a contest "of high skills and knowledge". They were very adamant about this.

First question : "3 + 4 = ... ?"

Written in a way smaller print than the rest of the document, so that my mother didn't see at all, and my brother only spotted it on the 3rd reading. My eyes were immediately drawn to it because the whole thing was so fishy that I just knew I should look at the small prints first...

You think that's devious ? It gets worse / better. The rules were enclosed within the mail, oh yes, they were. Written in what must have been a 5% grey on the back of the sheet, aka the closest thing to white without actually being white. In fine print, but still readable if you have the light at the right angle.

The reading of these rules were just as hilarious. Basically, they were free to cancel the "contest" at any time, without as much as a reason or a notice, without being obligated to a refund of any kind. The winner would be announced on December the 31st of year 2010, or later in case there were still several people with the same score at that date. They would then send the prize - which somehow was downsized from a 17'000€ check to a 500€ voucher for a trip to the Canaries Islands - within the 3 months following the announcement of the winner's name.

Which gives them something like 2 years to decide they cancel the whole thing and disappear with the money.


The other one, from Canada, was indeed a lottery. But for some reason, they decided that a) we deserved a 13'500 € check up front, just because and b) it would be a good idea to let us just write in the amount of money we wanted to win. I was tempted to write One Godzillion €, but I would probably have run out of place, what with all the '0's.

Anyway, it was fishier than a bouillabaisse in an aquarium. So I looked for the rules of that one, since those of the first one were so entertaining. Guess where I found them ? Printed on the inside of the envelope. They were basically the same as the other one, mostly stating that, if one were to fall for that, they'd be screwed, no matter what.


Since we received both of those on the same day, my brother and I were beginning to consider the idea of collecting them in order to make a book or something...

[Dips]

"It HAD to be good, otherwise why would you have cashed it!"

As far as we are concerned, it WAS good. Right up to the point where it WASN'T.

"Why didn't you tell me the check was bad!"

But we just did tell you.

"What do you mean I owe you $3000 for a returned check?"

I believe that to be self-explanatory. It means you owe us $3000 for a returned check.

The fact that you are trying to keep them from being scammed and yet they insist on doing it anyway. It must be frustrating.

O/T We do a lot of overseas business and give our routing numbers to customers so they can pay us by wire transfer. We also do the same with government agencies for wiring witheld taxes, etc. So the accountant didn't think much of it when she filled out an important government form that was faxed to us and faxed it back to a Washington number and signed the form.

It was a scammer who tried to wire $20,000 from our bank account using the accountant's signature as authorization. The bank manager thought it was odd because we'd never wired that much money before. So she called our accountant to confirm it. Needless to say, we were grateful for her diligence (unlike your customers).

We've since added some extra security measures onto our account.