So what happens when....

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 27 Sep 2008 Posts: 3

people cash the money order/cashiers check? Obviously they have to pay back the money, but I would imagine that in most cases, they simply don't have it...? So then what? Can banks add interest to their debt to them? Is legal action taken against a victim?

One other question.... what should one do if you got a scammer to send YOU money??

Scambot

Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 8:22 am

welcome to eater.

You will need to come up with a repayment plan if you don't have the money. Yes banks can add interest as any other company you may owe money to.
Sadly yes, legal action can be taken against a victim for cashing a fraudulent check. The best thing to do is discuss this with the bank. Supplying copies of the email interaction with the scammer, will certainly help them be more understanding to the situation.

As for the last question, we do not cash bait. Any money received from a lad, would probably be coming out of another victim's pocket.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 27 Sep 2008 Posts: 3

I'm curious how it's legal to add interest to someone's "balance" in a case like this. That is if the person cashed the check unwittingly of course.... they are a victim.. why should the bank profit?

I have read elsewhere that the two biggest $$ hitters on the scammers are to get them to make phone calls and send mail, such as overnighting their checks.... is that a practice that you guys do as well?

I got one last year to go pretty far... and when I finally let on that I knew from the start, he actually talked to me for a bit after that.... it appalled me to learn (according to him, so taken with a grain of salt), that he brought in 10-20k/month.... It's hard to believe with how long this stuff has been around, and how PREVALENT it is (I think I've gotten 5 or 6 emails in my junk/spam folder just TODAY), that they would have trouble finding uninformed victims.... and yet I also have NEVER seen a national news broadcast on it or anything of the type.

Scambot

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 25 Sep 2008 Posts: 7

IRL I work for a bank. We had a man come in, perhaps a year or two ago, wanting to pay a cheque into his account, for about £20,000. He said he had received it in the post, and was some lottery winnings. Smelling a rat we decided to pay it in for him, but told him NOT TO TOUCH IT, not to withdraw any money AT ALL, and instead transfer it into his high interest account. It sat there for three days before the cheque bounced (suprise..), but he had made a little bit of interest in it in the meantime. He came in a few days later to say he had phone call after phone call telling him to send money abroad. Was a shame, because he was quite an old boy and thought all his christmasses had come at once.

Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:18 am

Welcome to Eater, Scambot. Smile

Scambot wrote:

I'm curious how it's legal to add interest to someone's "balance" in a case like this. That is if the person cashed the check unwittingly of course.... they are a victim.. why should the bank profit?

I think you'll find that the authority to do so comes from the banks' standard terms and conditions. It's no different from the bank's prespective to any other cheque that bounces, and that the customer has drawn against before it has cleared. If you go overdrawn or exceed an agreed overdraft limit as a result, you'll probably get charged. The answer is to be sure of the source of cheques and not to draw against them until you are 100% positive they are okay, and I do not mean just when the funds appear in the account. As more bank small print will tell you, that's no guarantee the cheque is good.

Scambot wrote:

It's hard to believe with how long this stuff has been around, and how PREVALENT it is .... and yet I also have NEVER seen a national news broadcast on it or anything of the type.

There have been plenty, and many of our members here have been involved in national and local media broadcasts. Sadly, however,there are never enough reports, broadcasts and warnings out there to prevent some people getting scammed. Sad

Please do what you can to help - tell friends, family, colleagues, whoever you can think of. Word of mouth is really effective and dead easy to do. Smile

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

It's legal because it is. A cheque is a transaction between you and the scammer. It is your responsibility to ensure that the cheque is good and you are in the frame if it isn't. The escape clause there is that you didn't do it with intent to defraud, but if you keep doing it, or if the bank and police are a**holes, you will get into legal trouble for fraud. Plenty of victims do. The bank is a third-party to the fraudulent transaction; it isn't their problem. They are a publicly owned company and their only (relevant) legal duty is to make money. You signed up to their terms and conditions when you opened an account and it will be there in black and white that they will extract bad debt from you with interest. If you don't like that, you don't have to be a customer. Except of course you do, because otherwise you couldn't use any banks, or get paid by cheque or transfer.

Yes; they don't go about advertising the fact that cheques can bounce months later and that the customer takes all the risk. They are not required to; it would be bad for business.

Yes; it's vicious and cold-blooded.

The dark abyss of dog-eat-dog, real life is only a small mis-step away from the closeted, cotton-wool world in which most people assume they live.

Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 11:19 am

I do a lot of work for banks (I am a lawyer). I have dealt with the banks and the customer in many instances of 419 fraud where the dodgy check is deposited and the customer withdraws the money.

The customer of course should repay because they had the use of the money (even if it was to send it to the scammer) so why should the bank take the loss? It is not their fault the check was bad. If they are going to eat the loss from a scammers check, why not the bad check your buddy wrote you? If that is the case we can all just write bad checks.

As for the interest, the bank is profiting off of it, but if you read the account card your signed when you opened the account you agreed to pay interest and charges on over drafts.

From the banks perspective if you are over drawn $1,000.00 that is $1,000.00 less they have to make a loan where they would earn that interest.

Also most banks will report the bounced check to the authorities once it becomes clear it is a forgery rather than a legit check that just happens to be bad. When that happens the victim better hope they have proof they were a victim of fraud rather than a willing participant. There have been many stories of victims being arrested and prosecuted.

419Eater is my life Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 366

@Scambot

Quote:

It's hard to believe with how long this stuff has been around, and how PREVALENT it is . . . , that they would have trouble finding uninformed victims

The N1gerian 419 scams predates wide spread availability of the internet. In RL my company was getting 419 snail mail letters in the early 80's. We turned them over to the RCMP and later turned them over unopened. In one of my meetings they told me about the number and losses of some of the local victims. At that time there was about 1 victim per 7,000 locally in reported scams with $$losses.

The snail mail provided hard evidence, finger prints and printer / typewriter identification. Most scammers had a problem then buying luxury goods once they scored. The police followed the charter shopping flights to the UK from west africa. On landing in the UK periodically police made arrests and recovered some of the "ill-gotten gains" .

Scam victims are not always caught by greed. There is a current thread "I got caught in a scam!!" http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=148692&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 It is an overpayment scam where the victim is just trying to help correct what he thinks was a payment mixup. Tracing the scammer's phone numer with google shows several other similar victims over several years.

These are the truely innocent victims, worth our time baiting.

p.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 27 Sep 2008 Posts: 3

@The Man,

I wouldn't say a bank is taking a loss to initiate a payment plan with no interest... in fact I would say that are not taking a loss at all. They will still get their money...

For the interest, banks don't operate "cash on hand". That cashiers check/money order will make no difference whatsoever in their lending practices....

Recently a personal friend of mine took a $6000 loss on an "ebay vehicle" scam, so I've been looking more into scambaiting. I've done it small-scale in the past, but you guys seem to have some fun ideas with it.

Jon

Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 1:38 pm

Scambot:

Sure it effects their lending. The bank is required to have a certain amount of cash on hand v. the deposits, at least here in the USA. Washington Mutual was just taken over by the FDIC because they could not meet this limit. There was a run on the bank and they did not have the cash reserves to pay out the deposits because all the deposits were loaned out as mortgages, car loans etc (as banks do to make a profit).

So if you overdraw your account (because of fraud or just don't balance the check book right) by $1,000.00 that is $1,000.00 less in cash the bank has to meet their funding requirements. They can make that up by borrowing from the fed and paying the fed interest or by making $1,000.00 less in loans and not collecting the interest.

You have effectively taken a $1,000.00 loan from the bank. Why shouldn't you pay interest on it?

Does it make a difference to your response if the customer of the bank is overdrawn as a result of 419 fraud or just the customers own math error in balancing their check book?

If there is a difference how is the bank to know who to charge interest to and who not to?