why am I at school? I could make easy money via nearly untraceable check fraud

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I sell my photography services online, and I made arrangements with this one guy (apparently tourists from abroad) who offered to pay upfront. But the whole payment thing was weird, along the lines of “my local client owes me X so I will have him pay you X, you take your payment Y and give us the difference”. But the arrangements were in-depth and genuine (fairly convincing!) so when the check arrives I go directly to a branch of the bank listed on the check to verify the funds are there (they are not-- the bank actually confiscates the check for their own examination).</p>

<p>So now I think-- I avoided harm, but others may not.</p>

<p>But when I think about it, they’re really hard to trace really. They want the difference sent to a “tourist manager” via Moneygram (surprise) and proof of the transaction sent by email, and Moneygram probably won’t write a bogus receipt to lure them in to collect a sum that won’t be paid out (to say, set up a sting operation on the other side). The only other lead is that they sent the check by priority mail, so the transaction can be traced to a physical post office location-- but it’s not much of a lead. The whole email / IP-address lead is too time-consuming for most investigations to pursue, and can be stopped by using proxies. When I think about it, it’s nearly impossible to be caught!</p>

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<p>The foreign check for more than the amount due with you returning the change by money order is a relatively well-known scam, taking advantage of the fact that it can take a rather long time for the banking system to bounce back a bad foreign check.</p>

3

<p>This is extremely well publicized and has been going in for over a decade.</p>

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<p>Those tourists from abroad weren’t from Nigeria by any chance were they?</p>

5

<p>As a small business owner, I get these “offers” on a weekly basis. They are so transparent that I find them relatively amusing. Last week I got a request to quote from a “customer” who wanted a list of “everything that we had in stock” and could I possibly ship all of our products tomorrow. To Africa. We have around 1500 different sorts of parts in our warehouse.</p>

<p>Do people really take the bait? I guess anything is possible.</p>

6

<p>EP, After four years you really haven’t taken that honor code to heart, have you? Interesting. I have yet to met anyone graduate that hasn’t taken it’s tenants as a lifestyle choice long past graduation into their adult life.</p>

<p>Finish your degree and find a legitimate job that will make you happy.</p>

7

<p>Hey, folks, the OP isn’t really proposing to do this–she’s just noting that it seems like people who do it probably can get away with it. And she didn’t fall for the scam, either–she went to the bank and checked it out.</p>

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<p>"and Moneygram probably won’t write a bogus receipt to lure them in to collect a sum that won’t be paid out (to say, set up a sting operation on the other side). "</p>

<p>Actually that is exactly how they try to catch the fraudsters. An elderly woman I work with was targeted by scammers, and thanks to a well trained bank teller who identified it as a scam the thieves were caught. </p>

<p>The teller saw red flags of a scam when the woman went to withdraw money from her bank. After speaking to the woman and explaining the how these scams work the teller helped her contact the police. The police alerted Moneygram and they cooperated with them catching the crooks and saving her $$.</p>