Cashier’s Check Scams On the Rise

October 15th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under • by admin

Have you ever received an email telling you that you had won a lottery in another country that you never entered into? Have you ever had someone offer to pay you more than the list price for an eBay or craigslist listing? If you had responded to any of those solicitations, you would likely be offered a cashier’s check sent through FedEx or UPS. You could even take that check down to the bank and they would tell you that it’s legitimate. Only several weeks later would you find out that the check was fraudulent and be held responsible for making up the funds lost due to the phony cashier’s check. These types of fraudulent cashier’s check scams have been going on for quite a while, yet naïve consumers continue to fall for them.

The phony lottery scam is perhaps one of the most prevalent cashier’s check scam. You’ll receive an email telling you that you had won a large sum of money from a lottery in a foreign country. If you solicit that email, the con artist will mail you a cashier’s check and instruct you to wire some of the funds back to them as some sort of transaction fee or tax liability so that the large sum of money can be released to you. Of course there is no big lottery prize and the check you deposited was phony. The criminal now has your money and you won’t find out that the cashier’s check is fraudulent until weeks if not months later.

If you were to deposit one of these phony cashier’s checks, you could even find yourself in a jail cell! Banks make no hesitations to report someone who deposits a phony cashier’s check to the police with fraud charges. They don’t take the time to investigate whether or not you are a con artist or if you were the victim of some cashier’s check scam. There are nearly 50 individuals who are completely innocent of wrong doing but end up in jail each year because banks do not take the time to investigate the incident of fraud.

It’s very technically feasible for banks to check the validity of cashier’s checks on the spot, however financial institutions have yet to take any move in this direction because they do not want to pay the cost for the systems upgrade that would be required.

As long as banks continue to go after the victims of cashier’s check crimes instead of the perpetrators and make no effort to better screen for phony cashier’s checks these phony cashier’s check scams will continue plague America’s financial system.