Scam Alert – Old Scam, New Take

I talked to the FBI about this to make sure I was doing everything right, luckily I was. If only I had recognized it sooner.

The good news is I didn't loose any money. The bad news is, there's probably someone out there right now who is.

I'm not sure what this scam is called but essentially it's when someone from out of town contacts you and wants you to do some kind of work for them. They send you a cashiers check for lets say $2500, you're supposed to take out your portion and send the rest of the money to someone else that's involved in the same project. There's your red flag right there! So let's say your portion of the money is $500, the person contacts you and wants you to send the rest to a person via money gram in a another State. They're counting on your bank, and your good name at that bank, to give you the cash before the check has actually cleared. So you send the money to this other person and by the time the bank realizes the original cashiers check is a fake it's too late, you have withdrawn, sent and spent most of the cash already. Guess who's on the hook with the bank when they ask for their money back... you!

In my case the teller at Red River Credit Union noticed that the financial institution the check was drawn on looked like it was printed on a home printer and she had never heard of that institution. She relayed that information to me and asked if I had ever done business with that company before, I had not. I also told her to take her time, I didn't need the money for a few days and I wanted to make sure it was real before I withdrew anything.

It wasn't. So they didn't get any money and I didn't loose any money. However they are on to their next potential victim.

Have you ever seen those Nigerian Prince letters? I believe this is a new take on that old scam. The reason it came very close to working this time was it was directed at a very specific industry that I'm involved in that most people have no idea how it works, the Voice Over business. They found my name and contact information on a radio and voice over business site and initiated the contact from there. While the whole deal sounded a little odd from the get-go, they did have all the right terminology and procedures down so it sounded at least some-what legit, until they informed me that I would have to send money to someone in another state, then my radar went into full alert mode. I knew something stunk bad, and I was right.

It always seems to boil down to the old saying; "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

Beware!