Certified check scam

[Moneypitt]

Awhile back there was some discussion about a scam involving boat purchases by bogus certified checks. My son is selling a small fishing boat and we keep getting e mail responses from someone wanting to use a certified check for the purchase. Is any one looking for this clown? Should I call LE and try to set him up for the bust? Has anyone here actually been ripped off by this scam? Any factual info out there about this guy(s)? ...Moneypitt

[Rexone]

We've been burned on a couple fraudlent cashiers checks.
Be very careful. They look like the real McCoy too.

[Moneypitt]

Should I bait this guy(s) into a deal? How do they make the deal, it seems like they're offshore or something, as the messages are in quite broken english. Mike, did you contact any authorities? I am thinking federal here as any banking fraud falls under their jurisdiction.......I'd like to help stop these ass****s, what can I do? or who should I call?.......MP

[Rexone]

I have no idea on offshore deals on who to contact but you can just about bet they are bogus. Ask for a wire transfer, they usually disappear and you never hear another word. The bogus checks we got were payment on domestic UPS COD shipments.
I've already had 2 offshore offers on the Hallett I have for sale with payment by bank check. Wrote back requesting wire transfer and never heard from again. I don't even waste my time answering most of that crap any longer. We get probably a dozen requests a week for large quantities of parts for shipment to Indonesia or Singapore with payment by CC. We request Wire transfer and never hear from them either. There are no penalites in those countries for CC fraud.
Then theres the Nigeria bs. It just never ends.

[Infomaniac]

A friend of mine sold a boat to a guy in Iceland.
Same scam Routine. The guy wired him the money Western Union.
I told my friend it was a scam many times over.
Well the money was good. :eek!: :eek!:
And to boot, the guy was exploring several ways to get it shipped and has never responded back. It has been 6 months.

[Moneypitt]

The first e mail said the deal is done, no questions about the boat, or condition of the boat, but advised that method of payment would be by "certified check". I responded that method of sale was CASH. American CASH, and got no response. So, thanks to info I'd seen here I was aware of this scam. I will just either ignore these clowns or respond the same way requiring cash.......Thanks again.....Moneypitt

[Rexone]

The requests I received were similar, no concern about the boat or it's condition, only the payment by bank check. Totally bogus crap.

[Mr.Havasu]

Someone from the boards accepted a cashiers check from overseas last year and deposited it in his account. He said he was just going to sit on it and collect interest and see what happens but not ship the boat. I wonder what ever happened with that one?

[Ntwotrance]

the best thing to do is report it to the Secret Service and the FTC (forward the email to them). Also, contact the senders ISP and notify them of the scam. If you need help, pm me and I'll forward the email addresses to send these to. The ISP will close them down, and the FTC and SS will open a case against them....

[Ntwotrance]

decided to just post this for everyone so that it's available for everyone...
when you get spam, forward the email to:
SPAM@UCE.GOV, uce@ftc.gov
if you receive a 419 Scam, forward the email to:
SPAM@UCE.GOV, uce@ftc.gov, 419fcd@usss.treas.gov, info@cenbank.org, info@nigeria-consulate-atl.org, info@nigeria-consulate-ny.org, info@nigerianmission.org
this also works for other forms of scams. if you need to find the senders ISP, pm me, and I'll send you a seperate address to forward to, and then from there I can trace the sender/his ISP and send them an email to shut the account down.

[dmontzsta]

I would tell them you need to take it to the bank and have it checked and cleared before releasing the goods. My friend took a check for a $1700 MAC computer he sold and ended up getting burned.

[unleashed]

I sold something over the net and got an overseas response. The person sent me a cashiers check for 7000.00 and he was only supposed to send 5000.00. He said to ship the product and also to western union him the extra 2000.00. He siad that the extra 2000.00 was a mistake by his secretary whom sent the cashiers check. Obviously it was a scam. I took the check to my bank and they said it looked real but they would check into it for me. Well it came back that the cashiers check was fake and he was reported to the proper athorities by the bank(Banks dont like fraud). Anyhow to make a long story short this site(***boat) saved me from getting ripped off.
Deano
Unleashedclothing (http://www.unleashedclothing.com) :devil:

[HM]

Originally posted by dmontzsta
I would tell them you need to take it to the bank and have it checked and cleared before releasing the goods. My friend took a check for a $1700 MAC computer he sold and ended up getting burned.
The issuing bank is the only bank that can tell that many of these CC's are forged, they are that good. Your bank will tell you it is good and even release the cash. But a week or two later, the issuing bank denies payment to your bank and your bank pulls your money back out. Part of the reason these CC's are so hard to tell and that they make it through your bank is because they have (the bad guys) an inside person who provides the info of actually CC's that have been written. That is why they will often offer you an amount higher than you are asking and request you to send them the difference. Since the forgery's are an near perfect duplicate of the original, it does not get caught by the normal checks & balances since every thing fly's - the amount, the date written, the account number, and etc. What happens is 2 or more CC's get cashed for the same CC # at the issuing bank. The bank then compares it to the copy of the original draft and then they reject the forgery's. Some of these inside people have been busted.
Remember, it does not matter if YOUR bank says it is o.k. It can take several weeks for these things to get back to your bank because the original cashiers check that was forged may have not been processed or deposited. In some cases, a month or two may have gone by until the original CC was deposited. The bank has a year to just pull the money back out. Even after that, they can still take the money back from you, they just have a few legal hurdles, but may just try to pull the money back out and let you force them to jump the legal hurdles only to find out they get to keep it.
Repeat after me......Wire Transfer.

[Sleek-Jet]

Anyone used Escrow.com??
I've seen it advertized, and seems like the way to go on big ticket items bought over the internet.