Lancia Motor Club

A strange thing has happened. I was in the process of selling a secondhand book. I was promised a cheque in the post for a small amount, but nothing received. Oddly enough a building society cheque has arrived for thousands of pounds, from a London company. Please beware of this kind of thing.

Thanks Richard. A seemingly odd fraud at first glance but a serious one to be aware of.

It works off the back of the cheque clearance foibles. The victim cashes the cheque and sees almost straight away the amount in their bank account since their bank, in good faith, believes the cheque will clear. The fraudster then goes "oops I accidentally overpaid because ... can you refund the difference to this account ...". The victim does in good faith because they believe they have the fraudsters funds fully in their bank account; that cheque cleared after all. But days later once things have done the rounds in the clearance system the cheque bounces (sometimes the cheques are just clever forgeries) and those supposedly cleared funds are immediately removed from the victim's bank account. Except the victim has also now paid the fraudsters an effective cash refund direct to their account. Ouch.

If something ain't right i ain't right! I guess that's why PayPal are doing so well...

The fake. The 'perforation' is a cut. I have contacted the company whose name appears on the cheque. The account has been closed, and they are aware of this happening before.

Someone in admin at Forensics Control had openly twittered earlier this month: That post seems to have, um, mysteriously disappeared though! Inevitably because it's not very good publicity for and from a company that specialises in fraud and cybercrime. Oops!
Seems like they've upset someone along the way who is now trying to get revenge with fraudulent cheques in their name!
Obviously you're not going to cash the cheque Richard and I hope you didn't lose out on the book you were selling.
It's a shame there are these kind of people out there ...  >:(

When I was running a charity we had someone presenting fraudulent cheques (that had been expertly forged). Bank was very interested and stopped the money. I would just take it in to the local HSBC bank as the real account holder may not know it is being duplicated.....

The account holder has closed the account and I still have the book.

We once had a similar fraud at work. A company supposedly ordered an item, paid by what was called bank transfer to our account which showed as much to much money after being invoiced. As mentioned above they then asked for a refund, which is a subtle twist on the above as with bank xfers you normally have the money in the account before it shows up, so you think the funds are for real. The banks xfer was of course a paid in cheque and the account holder was not aware that a cheque had been used from their account.

Golden rule is to talk to your bank, who passed me through to their fraud dept and explained the scam.

Peter