Yep.
And as noted above, they have to treat cashier’s checks as genuine and credit them right away. Rather odd that there are no verification tools that let them verify such a check almost immediately; I suspect they could, but just don’t want to. Which is foolish, as it would save the banks SOOOOO much hassle (not to mention protecting innocent consumers, and stopping the complicit ones in their tracks).
Our latest frequent scams: the car warranty ones (usually come to my cell phone), and the Medicare enrollment ones. I just cleared out a bunch of messages from our home phone voicemail, from a bunch of different numbers, and all were identical recorded messages. I’m actually a little surprised that a message was left - most roboscams don’t.
The car warranty ones have occasionally been from a live human, with an accent suggesting they are NOT from India - one “American” English, another with a slight Hispanic accent. Those two were particularly memorable as they asked for (not me) by name, and with the second one, I was prepared with a sob story (literally) about how the person requested had died in a wreck in that same car, a few weeks before.
Others we or family members have run into:
The Grandparent Scam. - my MIL was briefly taken in by this
Mugged Overseas (a friend of mine was bemused to find out that evidently she’d a) been to England that week, and b) reached out to me for help)
Various Amazon scams, including this one which sounds like what my MIL also nearly fell for. The scammer got quite threatening over the phone.
Microsoft refund scams, where you’re “owed money” but they HAVE to direct deposit it, and will helpfully talk you through logging into your bank account (after installing backdoor software). MIL ALSO went far too far on falling for this one (you see a pattern here, right?).
And a fun trick where a fake tax return is filed, the money actually goes to YOU, and the scammers then pretend to be the IRS and demand the money back. If you’re wondering whether MIL fell for it… not quite. She called us the day the check arrived (since the scammers likely had outdated bank info for direct deposit), and asked what it could be about. Even without researching, I told her it was likely some kind of scam. FIL is the one who tried, repeatedly, to fall for it. He really, really, really, really wanted to take that check to the bank, ask them if it was real (it was - it was issued by a bank that does business with Intuit), and deposit it. Even after we told him it was a scam, he kept talking about trying to deposit it. We finally had MIL take the check away and write VOID on the front (then she actually tore it up - OK - and THREW IT AWAY - not OK, as it might have been needed for evidence). To the best of my knowledge, the scammers never actually contacted the parents, which was a surprise - maybe “they” logged onto their Intuit account and saw that a check had been mailed or something. Also, we helped the parents file a fraud report with the IRS. This DID delay their stimulus payments, though they eventually got them. AND, Intuit tried to bill them for a filing fee (which struck me as odd; the scammers would have had that taken out of the refund, so they didn’t risk any of their own $$). Luckily, a quick call from MIL made that go away.
Unemployment scams (something I had a lot of visibility into, last year). Not just filing a fraudulent unemployment claim, but just under a year ago there was a MAJOR rash of claimants who responded to text messages “from” the Department of Labor in their state, to follow a link and log into their accounts to make sure they were in good standing or something. The scammers used this to change direct deposit information… to scam accounts. And the whole process of applying for, and receiving, such benefits is such a clusterfuck that people had been conditioned to be unsurprised when their money didn’t arrive for a week or two… so it went on FAR longer than it should have.
