Cheque Scams

Lately I have been hooked onto Radio Talk Shows, and I heard some very interesting piece of news today.

There was this guy somewhere in Florida, who put up his couch for sale on craigslist for $200. Enquires started flowing in, and he got this email from some lady who said wanted the couch and would pay for the couch and the shipping charges for sending it to her. He did get a cheque from her by UPS overnight, a week later for $4500. On enquiry he was told that it was a mistake by the secretary, and he could cash the cheque and send the remaining money with the shipment. To cut a long story short, it is a scam, wherin the person sends stolen cheques to you and wants you to send them the money after you deposit the cheque and after a few days when the bank tries to clear it, you get caught for identity theft and they get the cashed amount.

More such instances were people dating online, and having the other person (after they become comfortable) send them cheques to cash, and after that it works the same way.

A dealer on ebay, had a customer send him a cheque for $7000 for buying some PS/2’s and requested the remaining money (around $2000) to be sent back along with the PS/2’s. He suspected something fishy, and went to his bank, and they called the toll – free number at the back of the cheque (it was a Chase Bank cheque) to verify the authenticity which was confirmed. A gut feeling with the dealer made him wait for a few more days before he sent the money and he later got a call from his bank saying the cheque was fraud and that the number at the back of the cheque was made up too and it went to the scammer who verified the authenticity of the cheque.

A bank confirmed that on an average they get cheques like this once in 10 days.
Be careful while dealing and doing any such business online, most of the cases you will find the other person communicating only by email.