“Monopoly Money” is of course a common euphemism for counterfeit money, and someone willing to make fake postal money orders is probably willing to pass fake bills-or mug you for whatever you’ve got when you get there. Have them meet you at your bank, where you can deposit the cash with them present. If it’s legit, no problem. If it’s not legit, they will back out of the deal.
Alternate plan-meet them at their bank, where you can watch them draw money out to hand over to you.
And to add to Czarcasm’s advice (very good, BTW), I think some people have an inflated opinion about their ability to detect counterfeit currency. I once had a friend in the Army who claimed to have a source of counterfeit $100 bills. He showed us one. It looked brand-new, and he said that if you rubbed the ink on counterfeits, it would bleed a little. We rubbed, and it bled, a little, or so we thought, so we were convinced.
He refused to let us see the batch of bills he had, saying that the identical serial numbers would give it away and he didn’t want to have any witnesses in case of prosecution. (It’s equally possible that the stack didn’t have the same serial numbers, but we couldn’t tell.)
However, he tempted us to say, “How much for one of those hundreds? Could we buy one for $20?”
Maybe not $20, but $90…and the negotiations continued, never reaching a transaction.
Later I got to know this guy (his name was David MacAnnally, and he is now dead, so I don’t think it matters) and I’m pretty sure he was funnin’ with us, seeing just how far we would go to obtain a “counterfeit” 100. I think the stack of 100’s he had were all virgin, valid, US bills and he never would have parted with one for less than $100. It was his way of having fun and testing our gullibility.
And it all started with his statement that only counterfeit ink would smear. Is that true? I don’t know.
Many years later I sold a car for $3500 cash to someone who claimed to be shipping it to his brother in Taiwan. He gave me crisp, new US $100 greenbacks. They looked genuine, but I wasn’t confident until they were safely in the bank.
Well, this is a silly place to try and pass counterfeit bills. You’re buying an item with a serial number and all, something that is large and easily traced. And- hard to sell. Why on earth would a counterfeiter pass his bill here? My Bro worked 20 years with the US Treasury, and this scenario made him laugh out loud. Counterfeiters buy untraceable stuff, stuff that can be re-sold, or small items where they get $96 change from their hundred.
Now sure, counterfeit bills are a possibility. But if you sell stuff, you have to take payment in *some way *and you can’t spend hours worrying about it or testing it. There is NO method of taking payment that is 100% risk free, but cash on the barrel head is as close as you can get.
When you buy things with cash at the store or deposit cash at the bank- how much time do they spend testing your bills out?
In any case, just because the bank accepts it for deposit it doesn;t mean that the bills are legit or that you are in the clear. If the bank later finds the bills are counterfeit, it’s not impossible for them to trace the deposit back to you, and you’re still stuck.
In my case of the $3500 car, in a few days or weeks it was supposedly on a boat to Southeast Asia and out of easy reach by US authorities. The buyer was unknown to me, and might have given a fake address and even fake ID. Serial numbers don’t seem to prevent chop shops from operating and cars from being stolen, so I don’t think my concern was paranoia, just being careful.
Every $100 bill I give to some local merchants is swiped with a counterfeit detector, so I’m not the only one concerned with fakes, and yes, they have been passed in our local business district. (And yes, I know that the yellow pens aren’t foolproof.)
I imagine tellers and other bank officers have received more training in detecting bad bills than I have and they have the resources to check serial numbers. If there’s been a rash of counterfeits in the neighborhood, I suspect they would be the first to be notified, not me. Perfect? No. But reasonable precautions aren’t a bad thing.
Because criminals are dumb?
I had an engeineering ethics class where the first statement made by the professor was:
“If you’re going to break the law, go big, do it once, then leave the country.”
Course, NOW you have to go somewhere where there’s no extradition treaty…you go to Mexico and what you do is bad enough, they’ll just waltz down there, cuff you and bring you home.
Exactly. The title alone is enough to determine that.
Update:
On Saturday night I made a counter-offer to the potential buyer’s offer and he accepted. He made arrangements for one of his cousin’s to come by my office and pay for the rig. He just left and I have cash (real cash as far as I can tell) in an envelope here on my desk. The cousin was a pretty nice guy but a little irritated that the buyer made him drive all the way here from San Jose to pay me for the cruiser. He perked up when I gave him directions to the nearest Indian casino.
The buyer is planning on coming over on the 8th to pick it up. I doubt it is much of a liability issue - it is sitting on jack stands in my barn and covered in dust.
So, I have the cash (and gave the cousin a receipt indicating that the rig had been paid in full) but signed over the title. At this point, I don’t think it is a scam - unless the money is counterfeit but it seems to be a hell of a lot of work to fleece me considering I still have the rig until next week.
Way to go! I’m glad that this time it wasn’t a scam…but when you go to the bank go ahead and have them check to bills.
Sure, sometimes they use those pens, but you can buy one at Frys if it will make you happy. UV can be used also.
The Bank tellers I know had one session of 1/2 hour. Hardly in depth.
Here’s my Bro’s hint, for free- check to see if it’s on real money paper- the kind with the little threads and all. Not just little lines on the surface that look like threads. IF they have done a good enough job to get it on the right paper- then it’s such a good job that only an expert can detect it.
But the few he’s shown me have been such bad jobs that they are easy to tell. Now, mind you, those are the ones that the real Secret Service isn;t all that interested in- small jobs run off on a copier somewhere. (His duties included auditing a number of Money Service Business- you know- check cashers- and if they had any funny money, his duty was to collect them and hand them over to the Secret Service with a little note on when and how. One odd story is that one of the 50’s *wasn’t *counterfeit, just old, and my Bro had to go through a lot of stuff just in case it was meant as a bribe!)
Weird. The e-mails read exactly like scammer e-mails.
Any idea of the nationality of the cousin?
American, ethnically Mexican, probably in his early 50’s.
Interestingly enough, the buyer informed me that they aren’t really cousins. The “cousin” is an old family friend who lives in an apartment at the buyer’s mother’s house and has cared for her for the past 20 years.
The “cousin” did tell me though, when I expressed a little incredulity at how the whole thing had transpired, that he (the cousin) goes around a couple of times a month paying for stuff that he (the buyer) buys off of the internet.
Well I’ll be damned.
Maybe it’s a scammer gone straight. That’d be a first, eh?
I posted a camera package on Craigslist on Tuesday, since then I have had 4 separate people, all from outside of my state (I indicated I would not ship anywhere to avoid shennanigans), indicating they were traveling right now and wanted to buy this for their niece/nephew/student/friend who was traveling outside the US. They would pay me extra for my trouble.
It’s like there’s some wort of “Craigslist Scamming for Dummies” book they all pull their template out of. I am tempted to get them to sebnd me some money and then tell them if they send me a little more I could send them the camera COD. Then fill a box with bricks and mail it to them.
You never know - maybe even scammers like to fix up old cars.
USPS money orders are not easily forged, and their authenticity is easily verified at your local post office. Scammers do not generally use USPS money orders for this very reason. Very glad to hear OP’s transaction settled.