Clearly, there are several of us named Abacha in this thread.
No, it really isn’t. Depending on how the MO is deposited, it can take several days to a few weeks before it’s identified as fraudulent. At this point, the USPS refuses to pay it, and eventually the depositor’s bank says, in effect, “Well, turns out that MO was no good, sorry! Yoink!” and they take then money out of your account.
Is there not a way you can deposit these things in the bank so that they are checked out thoroughly before the bank releases the money to you? One would think that the bank would do this.
I would not ship the item until the payment cleared, with no possibility of reversal. What kind of timeline is there on this?
I got a money order for a sale on ebay, and it had a thermal heat mark on it that changed color when I put my thumb on it. Do the fake money orders have these? I would think that would be hard to duplicate.
If you are suspicious I wouldn’t do it. It’s not worth the trouble.
You can get T-shirt ink that does this, so it’s probably not that hard to fake.
Scam! right from the postal service.
Googling fake USPS money orders brings up about 279,000 hits.
Don’t do it. If you are at all nervous about the sale or think that it could be in any way fraudulent sell it to someone else. No one on craigslist, and I mean NO ONE offers more than your listed price for an item. Most of them haggle to try and bring the price down, not push you to take more money. Also most everyone I have ever dealt with on craigslist understands that it is a cash only transaction if it is a local thing. The emails I get in regards to craigslist stuff generally say something like, “I want the NES you have for sale. Instead of $40 would you take $25 if I can pick it up today? Is it in good condition?” Anything that veers too far away from this in one direction or the other (“I will give you $60 for your $40 item!” or “Can we meet so I can test the item before we set a price? What is your address?”) is something I don’t even respond to because it will make me sorry later.
Stolen Postal Money Order blanks have all the security features; fakes printed on these are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
Probably not, but the level of scam being pulled here suggests that making a valid-looking fake money order with that kind of technology is beyond them.
If it were easy enough for them to get high quality fake docs, they could probably get someone who could write passable English.
This scam (and it is absolutely a scam) relies on people who don’t know exactly what a money order looks like, or that various methods of payment can be accepted for a while before they are discovered as fraudulent.
I’ve read that scammers deliberately use bad English so fool their marks into thinking that they (the scammers) are stupid.
If I were you and had some spare time, I would try to turn this into an adventure.
Call the cops. These days there are lots of county or state police agency cyber crime units. Report this and try to get involved in some police-sponsored counter-sting. Just make sure the government supplies whatever money is put at risk.
And later, the Witness Protection Program will be still ANOTHER adventure.
There was an article on tonight’s news about this scam. Someone sold an item for $1100 and received a cashier’s check for $2900. Yes, she was suspicious, but not suspicious enough. She checked on the remitter, and everything looked fine, so she deposited the check and sent back the difference. A week later, the bank wanted their money and froze her account.
The news item said people in this state alone had lost $400,000 to this scam. I don’t know if that was just this year or a longer time period, but it looks pretty common.
I’m puzzled why she didn’t verify the check with the issuing bank. One would think it would be just a simple phone call.
Interesting. I always thought you could theoretically redeem them for cash by going to a post office. I’ve only ever bought/sent them, not received them.
Well this has been an eye-opener.
Yes, you can. If you do that, you should be ok. Most people just deposit them in their bank for convenience, and that’s how they get bitten.
So the Post Office will cash a piece of paper without checking to see if it is valid? And wouldn’t they be in the very best position to do so – just look up a number in their database? And they don’t ask for or record any identification to cash it, and they don’t try to recoup their loss if detected later?
Hard to believe.
Scam. My mom got her bank account wiped in similar fashion. Don’t do it.
Do you really have to ask?
No. That’s why I said you’d be ok if you took it to the Post office.
I see. By “ok” you mean while you might not be able to convert the paper to cash safely, at least you wouldn’t be misled or given false hopes, either.
Exactly. Presumably, you’ve been smart enough not to ship the merchandise before trotting off to the nearest Post Office to cash your MO. The scam works on people who deposit the MO in their bank, instead. When they see the funds have become available they think “Oh, the MO must have been good!” and they happily ship off the merchandise. Couple weeks later, the money is gone and it’s too late to do anything about it.