That’s probably why the OP has received the email - it hasn’t got to work every time or even one time out of a hundred or a thousand; the scammers send a very large number of these messages out in the hope that one or two fish will bite.
But sending them out in huge volume means they are less discriminately targeted and people who are not business owners or salespeople will receive a copy.
Yes, inquiries or orders for “units” always made me laugh when I’d receive them in my counseling office email.
I’m currently reading a really excellent book on fraud (Lying for Money, by Dan Davies) which as well as having some fairly jaw dropping case studies, lays out both the techniques used by fraudsters and the socio-economic factors which make those techniques viable.
With respect to the indiscriminate high-volume approach which the OP has been caught up in, fraudsters often employ a “shotgun then sniper” approach: try everything; once something works, latch on to that security flaw and exploit it single-mindedly. This doesn’t just apply to finding a ready mark, but also to the specific vulnerability around e.g. invoicing that the mark is going to reveal.
The second, bigger point is: the optimum amount of fraud in a society is not zero. This is counter-intuitive but the point is that high-trust societies are better - richer, happier - than low-trust societies. But trust means deciding that in the interests of getting business done you will in fact accept that documents are what they purport to be, that people who want to do business with you will uphold their end of the deal etc. This doesn’t mean being naive. There will be audits, and checks, and processes. But not for every last single thing, because that gums up the works. So you decide what you need to check. Which means deciding what you won’t check. And that “negative template” is where fraudsters will operate.
My WAG: This has gotta appeal to small business owners. Even medium sized companies should have safeguards and, of course, large companies are right out.
I donno, I don’t see how individuals would get caught up in this particular scam, but I obviously lack the imagination to be a good scammer.
(Of course I understand that they are just sending out thousands or tens (hundreds?) of thousands of emails and waiting for someone to bite, but who would bite? Some who has a product? )
That totally sounds like RW glurge where rampant criminality goes free and the innocent are punished.
Is there a cite for this actually happening, or is it just “we’ve all heard about it on TwitFace?”
Yeah, there’s a weird little quirk of perception at play in this - if you receive a lot of spam, most of it will be irrelevant and obvious, but that serves to contrast the rare examples when the scammer happens to have hit on something relevant by coincidence - the victim is inclined to think “Oh, this one must be real because I AM actually expecting a delivery this week”, or whatever. Exposure to scams doesn’t always make us better at recognising all of them.
Yeah, the book also points out that scammers operate by getting into people’s blind spots. The temptation from the outside is to say “how could these people be so blind, that would never happen to me” but a really important feature of blind spots is that you are blind to your own.
When this occurs, the first consequence you will face is paying the bank back. If there’s no reason to believe you knew the check was bad, this should be the end of it. However, if the bank representatives suspect you knew the check was worthless and still cashed it, you could face fines and jail time.
From this attorney
And I have read factual stories online where this has happened.
One of these happened to me, which I diligently followed up properly and confirmed was, in fact, fraud.
I got an e-mail that looked like it was from my bank, about fraud activity on my credit card. At the time, I was in Tanzania, on a safari. (I live in the USA.) I had, in fact, used that credit card locally the day before.
I did the right thing - touched base with my financial advisor at the same bank, who ran all the checks internally for me, and contacted the fraud department. They all confirmed nothing was amiss, and that the e-mail was coincidental.
Frankly, that answer seems self-serving. Such as, “In many cases, you can explain your circumstances to the bank with the help of a lawyer to avoid charges being brought against you.”
The first time you said:
Then you found the quote that said:
There is a difference between the two. Deposting it and cashing it are different.
C.f. asking to buy “the item” (off of Ebay) without specifying what it is. Oh, so you’re interested in my collection of Jerry Lee Lewis commemorative plates, are you? Yay!
In the same exact vein, I got a text the other day from the Las Vegas area code, just one word:
“Hello.”
Quite so. One of the most annoying themes in the comments on my scam awareness videos is ‘This is soooo obvious - how could anyone fall for that; they must be stupid!’
But it’s just a failure of imagination. I know the things I know - you know the things you know - none of us were born knowing anything; not everyone has the opportunity to learn the same things as everyone else, and nobody ever gets to the point where they have learned everything - so some things that are obvious to one person are not to another.
I get something similar about daily. Some days I get 5, other days zero. The area codes are all over the map, and all the texts are something like “Hello” or “How are you”, or “This is John / Jane” or …
Read the second part and my earlier post. The examples I saw were specifically a person depositing a bad check that they told the bank they suspected was fraudulent and the bank telling them to deposit it anyways. IIRC Steve Lehto did a video on a guy who did this but with the search algorithm being what it is, it is difficult to find again.
Another video (sorry AI) that backs me up and again - it is if you know/think it is fraudulent and deposit it anyways.
Did you actually watch the video ?
It says nothing of the sort and it says nothing about people getting arrested for depositing checks on the advice of the bank.
It says you can be arrested for knowingly depositing a fraudulent check
I have seen stories online where a person goes into their bank and says they think a check is fraudulent
The teller says to deposit it anyways
They have now deposited a check that according to the bank they knew was fraudulent based on the fact they told the teller that.
The bank has them charged for a crime.
Except they told the teller that they suspected the check was fraudulent and asked for advice how to proceed. Depositing the suspect check was at the suggestion of the teller or bank manager.
Yes! That is what I’ve been saying from the start.
They told the bank they thought it was fraudulent. That is why it is crime.
Since the bank would have no incentive to deliberately jam up the poor customer with the law (if the customer is apparently trying to do the right thing), do we infer that a teller who’d give that kind of advice simply doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about?
I mean, I don’t think I’d want to do business with a bank if I heard a credible story that they had done something like that to someone.