Behold: even Craig’s List is onto it and tries to warn people:
This is pretty much the same reason consumers buy Norton/Symantec products. They used to be good.
Or the Better Business Bureau - which is now basically a scam in and of itself.
Og: “Me want buy you mammoth meat. Me send you bear hide. Oops, too much, so you keep bear hide, send me meat and two rabbit pelts too.”
This was a common problem at a home builder I worked for in the 90’s. There have been warnings about check-washing since the early 90’s. Exaggeration doesn’t help your arguments.
No offense meant and I certainly applaud your effort to bring it to the attention of those that might not know… but man, that scam is anything but “new”. 
Relevant xkcd.
Care to expound? I haven’t heard this before.
Businesses can now buy memberships into the BBB and only those that do are truly accountable to them. The more unbiased source now is RipoffReport.com.
Yes, yes. People who seem to delight in dissing people who just learned something clearly haven’t seen that xkcd
I know an idiot that fell for this. It was the guy at Western Union that wouldn’t allow him to wire the “refund” that clued him into the scam.
Of course, he fucked himself with the bank, because he deposited the bogus check, then started spending all the money and bouncing checks. Idiot.
This happened to me and sounds vaugely similar to the one the OP describes.
I advertised for a roomie for my 2-bedroom apartment and got an interest from a guy the following way:
- First sends a text
- When I dont respond sends an email from a public domain
He tells me:
- I am too busy to come look at your place because blah blah
- I will send funds to your account, share your account details (never asked how much I wanted for the share!)
- If the funds are in excess, take what you charge for the rent, and forward the rest to my “agent’s account”
- Please help me because my life is too busy, I trust you blah
Never called me, said he cannot be reached because he is somewhere where they dont have signals (BTW, is there anywhere in the continental US where this might happen? Mountains of Montana maybe?)
I never responded, he never contacted me again. I think he was phishing for my account information. Another could be to move money around through unsuspecting people, though this doesnt make sense for small sums.
How much of Western Union’s business is on the up-and-up? We used them once to wire several hundred dollars to a family member on business in the Czech Republic who was having credit card issues (no, not that Facebook distress message scam, we knew she was really there) but that was one time. I’ve never heard of anyone else I know ever using it for a legitimate purpose.
The same could be said of ANY scams. That’s why scams work at all.
You’re essentially saying you don’t know the day-to-day business of anyone whose family is in another country. In my circle of neighbors and friends, I can think of 5-6 that I know send money to Mexico, Colombia, Turkey, India and Kyrgyzstan every month; surely more people I know do the same thing, I simply don’t hear about it in their usual ‘What are you up to today?’ talk.
And you (or were able to) basically change a “C” rating to an “A+” by giving them money. They claim to have changed their practices, but they have lost virtually all credibility - they’ve been exposed on various news magazines and have gotten warning from various states attorneys general.
Plenty of scam artists now brag about their ratings with the BBB. A new business can get a perfect rating in something like 30 days by just paying them money.
Watch this video (20/20)
Around the 6:30 mark - 20/20 listens into a phone call where a woman talks to a BBB telemarketer on the phone - she pays them money - and the next day her “C” rating is changed to an “A+” and the BBB erases the complaint off their website.
Nah, you can get a pretty good signal from the mountains-- You’ve got line of sight to just about everywhere. You might have a problem in a canyon, though.
Speaking of Montana, I got burned by a cashier’s check just last year, without any scam involved at all. I moved from Montana to Ohio, and I didn’t have any problems with my old bank, but they only have locations in Montana and Wyoming. So, I needed to close out my account, and get a new bank. I ask my bank about the best way to go about this, and they told me to set up the new account, then write them a letter asking them to close out my account and send me the balance.
OK, so I expect that this sort of thing can take a while for the paperwork to go through (if nothing else, there’s a delay from the US mail going across the country and back). So, I find a bank around here, set up an account using some petty cash I have on me, get all of my bills for the month paid up using the old Montana account, and send them the letter. Get a cashier’s check for my balance, take it down to my new bank, and deposit it… Only to find that because I’ve got a new account, and because it’s a cashier’s check, they have to put a hold on the funds for six weeks.
What!? One bank sending money to another bank, and they can’t work out a way to do it any quicker than six weeks? And meanwhile here I am, with rent coming due before then, and all of my life’s savings in limbo. If I’m ever in this situation again, I’ll know to transfer only half the money at a time, and wait for it to clear before closing out so I’d at least have the old bank available, but that shouldn’t be necessary in the first place.
What about a bank to bank wire transfer? The cost is only a few dollars. I don’t know how authorization is handled, but our title company does it all the time with banks and gets confirmation in minutes.
It is extremely popular for sending money to family outside the USA, often the breadwinner might be working in the USA. I’m guessing that might be the bulk of their business.
The general term for such money transfers from a expat worker to family in his or her home country is “remittances.” For some countries with large numbers of overseas workers, these money transfers amount to billions of dollars.