9 Murray Street, 3rd Flr
New York, NY 10007
212-349-6460
Counterfeit Check Scams
Selling stuff online? Then beware of anyone who claims to have "accidentally" overpaid, especially if they ask you to cash their check and wire back the difference.
Computers and high-end printers make it easy to forge checks that'll fool even experienced bank tellers. Since federal law requires banks to release funds from most checks in less than five business days and fake checks sometimes take weeks to discover, it's no surprise that counterfeit check scams work.
Unfortunately, victims of check fraud are liable for the checks they deposit, and they quickly discover it's next to impossible to recover the funds they wired. Even worse, some unlucky victims even end up suspects in their own fraud investigations.
Cyber crooks use countless angles to fool you into passing their phony checks. Payments for online sales or auctions, taxes on supposed lottery winnings, or "advance pay" on Work-at-Home schemes are just a few of their tricks. Some check scammers even befriend or romance their victims on social networking or dating sites then tell some sob story about a crisis at home and a check they can't cash. What's more, counterfeit checks are also becoming an increasingly common way for foreign money scammers to cash in on their victims.