My mother is a recent victim of this check fraud scam. She reserved a letter with a check for almost 2 grand. The letter's contact name was Alex Rupert and the number was from Ontario, Canada. The business said it was from somewhere in the US. The list of places to shop was Walmart, Western Union, and Kmart or JcPenny in that order. $1900 of the almost $2000 was to be sent over Western Union, to someone in London.
My mother has a credit union instead of a bank, but I don't know if that had anything to do with the check not having a hold on it. Due to not having a hold she started withdrawing from it. As to be found out the check was no good a week later and mother over drew her account into the thousands. They took advantage of another person that was in need of the money. There was almost an element of greed in it, not using what she knew about banking to look into the check first. She would have known better if they were asking for personal info, or asking for money first, however. I would have jumped on alert of the check was over 2 grand.
It all seemed fishy, though. The company was in the US, but the number was from Canada. They wanted most of the money to be wired to someone overseas. It came from a company we've never heard of before. If it were my I would have thought to research it first, but mother was too excited to think about looking into the possibility it could be a scam. I've looked it up, after the fact, and I see this is a very popular scam. If it had my name on it I would have taken a smarter route, but mother and I are too different people. I don't know a lot about banking, but I’m considerably paranoid of ID theft so I would have gutted the fish to make sure it was real. But for the record, shit looked legit. It was a real looking check, it had names and numbers, and it had popular businesses. However, the woman that processed the funds at Western Union did warn mother of someone else who was scammed the same way. I doubt she made a point of it, like "Ma'am, you really need to think about this before you do this. It's a very popular check scam." Also, my mother is very stubborn. Despite warning she did it anyway.
I saw a helpful hint on a site, which I will repeat: "When you receive a cashier's check, or any type of sweepstakes check, always call that bank that it was drawn out of..."
We're very fortunate the damage isn't as bad as a lot of comments I've read on sites about this scam. She didn't get to jail, for cashing a fake check, and stealing the money from them. The credit union unlocked her account, and they trust her to pay back the money. Her account is overdrawn about $1300, and that's clearly not the worst that could have happened. She's not sick, has any manager illness, or disabled so she's not in complete turmoil over it. It will take some time to fix, but this is far from the worst that could have happened.
Unfortunately, mother is too ashamed to report it to the police. She won't event give me a copy of the check so I can show an example of what to look out for, out of all the check frauds coming out of Canada. It's kind of funny. If this came from somewhere in Africa we would have assumed it was a scam, but Canada?! No, not Canada. Well played, scammers. Well played.
My mother has a credit union instead of a bank, but I don't know if that had anything to do with the check not having a hold on it. Due to not having a hold she started withdrawing from it. As to be found out the check was no good a week later and mother over drew her account into the thousands. They took advantage of another person that was in need of the money. There was almost an element of greed in it, not using what she knew about banking to look into the check first. She would have known better if they were asking for personal info, or asking for money first, however. I would have jumped on alert of the check was over 2 grand.
It all seemed fishy, though. The company was in the US, but the number was from Canada. They wanted most of the money to be wired to someone overseas. It came from a company we've never heard of before. If it were my I would have thought to research it first, but mother was too excited to think about looking into the possibility it could be a scam. I've looked it up, after the fact, and I see this is a very popular scam. If it had my name on it I would have taken a smarter route, but mother and I are too different people. I don't know a lot about banking, but I’m considerably paranoid of ID theft so I would have gutted the fish to make sure it was real. But for the record, shit looked legit. It was a real looking check, it had names and numbers, and it had popular businesses. However, the woman that processed the funds at Western Union did warn mother of someone else who was scammed the same way. I doubt she made a point of it, like "Ma'am, you really need to think about this before you do this. It's a very popular check scam." Also, my mother is very stubborn. Despite warning she did it anyway.
I saw a helpful hint on a site, which I will repeat: "When you receive a cashier's check, or any type of sweepstakes check, always call that bank that it was drawn out of..."
We're very fortunate the damage isn't as bad as a lot of comments I've read on sites about this scam. She didn't get to jail, for cashing a fake check, and stealing the money from them. The credit union unlocked her account, and they trust her to pay back the money. Her account is overdrawn about $1300, and that's clearly not the worst that could have happened. She's not sick, has any manager illness, or disabled so she's not in complete turmoil over it. It will take some time to fix, but this is far from the worst that could have happened.
Unfortunately, mother is too ashamed to report it to the police. She won't event give me a copy of the check so I can show an example of what to look out for, out of all the check frauds coming out of Canada. It's kind of funny. If this came from somewhere in Africa we would have assumed it was a scam, but Canada?! No, not Canada. Well played, scammers. Well played.
