Two words that don’t belong in a sentence together.
Two words in the English language you’ll never want to hear together especially if you’re a victim is Money and Scam.
Here’s a typical scam that involves a scammer using check fraud to relieve you of your money.
The fake check scam can be applied to many different situations (for example, if you recently filled out an application to a job , or you are trying to sell an item on a popular classifieds site like Letgo and Craigslist, or someone wants to purchase goods or services from your business, or you were offered a job as a mystery shopper, or you received a check in the mail for no reason).
As you can read, it can occur in many different fashions. Only thing that matters to the would be scammer is separating you from your cash just before you notice. Here are some tips and tell tale signs that you are being worked over:
*First, The scammer sends you a very real looking, but fake, check. Sometimes they'll call it a "cashier's check", a "certified check", or a "verified check".
* Then, You deposit the check into your bank account, and within a couple of days your bank makes some or all of the funds available to you. This makes you think that the check is real and the funds have cleared. However, the money appearing in your account **is not** the same as the check actually clearing. The bank must make the funds available to you before they have cleared the check because that is the law.
*And for various and often complicated reasons, depending on the specific story line of the scam, the scammer will ask you to send someone some of the money, using services like MoneyGram, Western Union, and Walmart-2-Walmart. Sometimes the scammer will ask for you to purchase gift cards (iTunes, Amazon, Steam, etc) and give them the codes to redeem the gift cards. Some scammers may also give you instructions on how to buy and send them bitcoins.
* Within a couple of weeks, though it can take as long as a month, your bank will realize that the check you deposited was fake, and your bank will remove the funds that you deposited into your account and charge you a bounced check fee. If you withdrew any of the money from the fake check, that money will be gone and you will owe that money to the bank. Some posters have even had their bank accounts closed and have been blocked from having another account for 5 years using ChexSystems.
You’ve been warned by the number one Paper Business in America.