Drive by cheque scam

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 30 Jul 2012 Posts: 1

Hey everyone, just wondering if anyone's heard of, or encountered the following scam:

I was walking back from the shops when a man in a van pulls up asking for help (I assumed he wanted directions). What he instead says is he just cleared some rubbish from an old woman's house and was paid by cheque for £60.

The problem, according to him, was that he was low on petrol (Didn't get to see the fuel gauge, alas) and he needed money to get back to Southampton (This took place in Slough, I should add). He asked for thirty pounds in exchange for the cheque, which, "fortunately" had no name filled in. I let him know I had no money on me and he drove off in a huff.

I'm assuming the cheque was from a stolen chequebook since using their own would be pretty stupid.

I've tried googling to see if anyone else has had something similar happen, but I can't seem to find anything. Anyone else know of this particular scheme?

Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2012 1:31 am

Your guess is undoubtedly accurate. The check is going to be fraudulent.

I haven't seen this variant with checks before, but I have seen the same scam with gift cards--where the scammer tries to trade a supposedly high-value gift card for cash using the same or very similar story.

The concept is the same--use innocent victims to change a worthless item into cash.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 21 Oct 2012 Posts: 11

CSI had an episode involving chips. The man couldn't exchange the chips worth 5,000 because he didn't have an ID so the tourists gave him 500 to hold to make sure they came back with the money. The chips were worthless.

Baiting Guru Joined: 27 Mar 2011 Posts: 21158

I saw something similar using the food stamp cards here. They were using their allotment then selling off nonexistent credit and calling the card in stolen to get a new one after the person found out.