Cheque Cashing Scam

Some schemes are based solely on conning the victim into cashing counterfeit cheques. The scammer will contact the victim to interest them in a "work-at-home" opportunity, or asking them to cash a cheque or money order that for some reason cannot be redeemed locally. A recently-used cover story is that the perpetrator of the scam wishes the victim to work as a "mystery shopper", evaluating the service provided by MoneyGram or Western Union locations within major retailers such as Wal-Mart.

The scammer sends the victim a cheque or money order, the victim cashes it, sends the cash to the scammer via wire transfer, and the scammer disappears. Later the forgery is discovered and the bank transaction is reversed, leaving the victim liable for the balance. Schemes based solely on cheque cashing will usually offer only a small part of the cheque's total amount, with the assurance that many more cheques will follow; if the victim buys in to the scam and cashes all the cheques, the scammer can win big in a very short period of time. Other scams such as overpayment usually result in smaller revenues for the scammer, but have a higher success rate as the scammer's request seems more believable.

Some cheque-cashing scammers use multiple victims at multiple stages of the scam. A victim in the U.S. or other "safe" country such as the UK or Canada (often the country in which the cashing victim resides) is sometimes approached with an offer to fill out cheques sent to them by the scammer and mail them to other victims who will cash the cheque and wire the money to the scammer.

The cheque mailer is usually promised a cut of the money from the scammer; this usually never occurs, and in fact the cheque mailer is often conned into paying for the production and shipping costs of the cheques. The cheque information has either been stolen or fictionalized and the cheques forged. The victim mailing the cheque is usually far easier to track (and prosecute) than the scammer, so when the cheques turn up as fraudulent, the one mailing them usually ends up not only facing federal bank fraud and conspiracy charges, but liability for the full amount of the fraudulent cheques. Because the cheque mailer is taking the fall, the scammer is even less likely to be caught, which makes it a popular variation of the scam for scammers in nations with tougher anti-fraud laws.

A variation of the cheque-cashing scheme involves owners of vacation rentals. The scammer will express interest in renting the unit for a much higher than normal rate, usually for an upcoming honeymoon, business trip, etc. The scammer also offers to pay all fees "up front" as soon as the unsuspecting unit owner agrees to the windfall rental.

Eventually a very official looking money order/cashier's cheque arrives. About this time the scammer requests that a portion of the rental fee be returned for some compelling reason...wedding called off, death in the family, business failure, etc. Due to the supposed crises, it is requested that most of the rental fee be returned via wire transfer. The unit owner in encouraged to retain "a fair amount" to compensate him for his time. The wire transfer is sent, only to find out later that the official looking cheque was indeed fake and the entire amount is charged back to the unit owner by his bank.