Scam of the week

Last week we had to fend off a scam attempt. The scam worked like this:

• Ask for a quote for one or more products;
• Order a product and arrange to pay by bank transfer;
• Go to a bank and manually pay a counterfeit cheque into the company account. The cheque has no chance of clearing and was not a bank printed cheque. The cheque looked like it had been printed on a dot matrix printer so I was surprised the bank accepted it. This is where the con comes into play, the amount of the payment was 10x higher than the amount due. So it looks like a simple transcription error;
• Ring up and say that the bill has been paid by bank transfer. Apologise for paying too much and say it was a clerical error. Ask for a refund of the difference to be sent by bank transfer to another account;
• Profit!
• Disappear without trace.

The con was very professional and well executed and the only thing that saved us was that cash flow was tight and we didn’t have enough money to pay. So we waited until cash flow improved. Fortunately, before we had enough money, the bank contacted us about the cheque not being valid.

Had the con targetted slightly less money, we would have fallen for it hook line and sinker.

The con relies on the fact that a cheque when it first enters the bank processing system appears as a balance in your account before the money becomes cleared. The gap between the cheque appearing in your account and becoming cleared isn’t long, in this case only two or three days. But that gives the con artist a short window to play this con.

Be careful out there folks, there are some odd sorts out there.

Update 2015/07/13: The scammer sent us an email over the weekend asking where his money is. 😄

Update 2022/11/24: Added extra information to hopefully help people identify a con such as this one.