Today the UPS man brought us two overnight envelopes from different states. In each envelope was a check for $3,000. Nothing else, just a check made out to my husband. Of course we knew better than to think we had somehow magically just struck it lucky so we started trying to find out where these checks came from.
A quick anywho search provided us a phone number to the companies who's accounts the checks were supposedly drawn on. One was a school and the other was a fairly large humanitarian grant and fellowship organization. I left messages at both places asking if they were aware that they had magically sent us these checks. I was fairly bored today so since I hadn't actually reached a person at either place I called the banks the checks were drawn on. This was fairly interesting. First of all I learned that yes, the account numbers and bank routing numbers were correct and the account holders were accurate. I told both banks that I believed these checks to be fraud on their account holders. I was actually told by one Wachovia bank employee that she didn't know if they were or not and I should just cash them. WOW! Glad I don't bank with that particular bank or branch.
From there I decided to call the people who's names were on the UPS envelopes as the senders of the checks. Again, I apparently have too much time on my hands today. The names and cities didn't match the checks so it was obvious that they were also being used by the scammers. I talked to a lady at one of the stores that supposedly sent the checks. She was familiar with what this was all about. Apparently their UPS shipping account had been hijacked by the scammers and their account with UPS has been used to send quite a few of these checks. Some people got checks as big as $15,000. Now I felt kinda bad. I was only worth $3,000? No fair. But anyway, she referred me to her corporate office and to a very intellegent and helpful lady. From there it's gone to the FBI.
These scammers have actually gotten a hold of legitmate checking accounts for companies and organizations and have printed out their own checks drawn on these people's accounts. The trick, as I've learned in the past, is that they send us a check for $3,000 to purchase something we have in our shop. The item they are purchasing is worth less than the $3,000 check. Then they contact us and want us to forward payment out of the overpayment to their shipper so that the shipper will come and get the item. There is no shipper. There is no one coming to get an item. They profit when someone actually does send them the requested money for shipping. The checks appear good until the account holder actually finds out their account is being used.
I've never actually fallen for this scam, but it's been tried on us numerous times now. Just thought it may be interesting to others out there.
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We had something very similar happen to us, too. We received a check for about $10,000 dollars, if we wired $600 to so-and-so (for some unclear reason). We ran it by the bank, so the fraud could be reported. Turns out the account was fact, but had been shut down. I guess someone had hijacked a closed account's numbers to forge the checks.
ReplyDeleteThese kinda things happen with alarming frequency, unfortunately :(