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Fake Cashiers Check! Beware of Craigslist Job Ad Scammers!

Vihzel

Destroying Balls Everyday
Apr 8, 2010
5,364
1,056
34
Manhattan, NY
So I have received a fake cashiers check today from a guy who tried to scam me on Craigslist. He was able to get my address as the result of a fake job ad to whom I sent my resume to. The guy sent me an email today giving me instructions on what to do with the fake cashiers check:

1. Deposit into my bank account
2. Keep a certain amount of it (as payment) and wire the rest to another account
3. Get caught by the bank and suffer the consequences (he didn't say that)

Basically what happens is that my bank (Chase) would find out that the check is fake, but the money that I was supposed to wire from my own account, lets say $2,000, would have already been sent over to the scammer's account before Chase found out about the fake check. Let me break it down easily for you on what would happen to my bank account:

$10,000 (original)
$12,500 (after fake check deposit)
$10,500(after sending $2,000 as wire to scammer's account and keep
$500 as payment)

... bank finds out that it's a fake check and at the end of all of this...

$8,000 (result of sending $2,000 of my real money to scammer's account)

So now the scammer would have $2,000 of my real money while I gain absolutely nothing but major credit and financial problems with Chase and potentially... criminal charges.

Now that's the background to all of this. I contacted CFW Federal Credit Union to talk to them on what to do with this fake cashiers check that I have now and they told me to call back during business hours and talk with the fraud department.

I was wondering... does anyone here know if the scammer is able to be caught as the result of this? I have heard that scammers will use a fake mailing address to use for sending the fake cashiers checks. According to my USPS Express Mail Envelope, it shows:
 
I dont know exactly about US but in my country , a nice Ponzi is executed

Basically The key Person (Mr Ponzi aka Mr. craigslist dude) hires a bunch of unemployed youths(The Youth) with bank accounts .Their accounts are usually used by Mr Ponzi to transfer the money .

In addition of allowance of the account usage ,they are supposed to mail "material and documents"(fake cheques) from their addresses.

They are instructed that money will be transferred to their bank accounts .
They have to send the money to an overseas account after deducting their salary for "hard" work

So say after 2000$ transfer from your account ,1500$ will be transferred to an overseas bank account probably with no extradition laws with my country.
500$ is the so called salary

Mr Ponzi sits tight with the money somewhere .

The Youth gets arrested after a while for bank fraud .

Case closed . We get to twiddle thumbs.

This was a simple 2 layered Ponzi .Sometimes 4+ layered ponzi is also executed . Really depends on creativity of con artist
 
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^ Wait... so the address that was used to send the envelope is by a real person? I thought that the scammer would grab random addresses and names to use as the sender address. It always made me wonder that anyone could send anything with my name and address, like anthrax. All they would have to do is just drop it off in a USPS box. Well I hope that there's a record of someone getting that cashiers check. This specific credit union is located in Florida but the sender address is San Francisco. Hmm...
 
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